Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!wuarchive!texbell!sugar!ficc!peter
From: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: Need help with rn/bnews on Apollos
Message-ID: <5743@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 17 Aug 89 12:44:57 GMT
References: <203@digi.UUCP>
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Lines: 25

You have the same problem if the news node is inaccessable for some reason.

The best solution I've found to running rnews over a network is to replace
/usr/bin/rnews with a shell script that remotely execs rnews on the machine
the news system is on, with a bit of extra sugar to save the news somewhere
handy if the remote node is really dead. In our case that script is:

:
cat >/tmp/rnews$$
if rexec //xds13/usr/bin/rnews $* < /tmp/rnews$$
then
  rm /tmp/rnews$$
else
  echo "`date` * rnews - can't access xds13" >> /usr/spool/uucp/POLLOG
  mv /tmp/rnews$$ /usr2/saved.news/`date +%y%m%d.%H%M%S`
fi

Then I run something in the crontab *on the news machine* to snarf the
files in //ficc/usr2/saved.news. A similar technique can probably be used
on your Apollo network.
-- 
Peter da Silva, *NIX support guy @ Ferranti International Controls Corporation.
Biz: peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. Fun: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com. `-_-'
"Optimization is not some mystical state of grace, it is an intricate act   U
   of human labor which carries real costs and real risks." -- Tom Neff