Newsgroups: news.software.b Path: utzoo!utstat!geoff From: geoff@utstat.uucp (Geoff Collyer) Subject: Re: C News, 386/ix, assorted questions/experiences Message-ID: <1989Aug14.040740.3151@utstat.uucp> Organization: Statistics, U. of Toronto References: <1989Aug13.161806.15829@jdyx.UUCP> Distribution: na Date: Mon, 14 Aug 89 04:07:40 GMT Just a reminder: "Distribution: usa" only gets to Toronto by a fluke of our nntp connections. Canada is not yet part of the USA, so na or world distribution is appropriate and I have changed the distribution on this followup to na. Tom Friedel: >I am running 386/ix. The libstdio code fails only in one case, >and that is when stdiock.fast -i -u is sent to stdout. I get the >message that _cnt is not compatible. Why, and will this be a problem. We don't know why your vendor has changed the meaning of _cnt, but it doesn't matter; if you get any stdiock failure, you have to use your vendor's stdio. We hope that if they diddled the semantics of _cnt or _ptr that they have also tuned the guts, but we can't promise. >I am running nn, which expires based upon 3 field in active file. >C News does not update this field with expire, and upact is murder >on my disk drive. Expire -c 'checks consistency of active file'. >What exactly does expire -c do? And what is the best way to use NN >with C News? I'll let Henry give the definitive answer on upact (which I only run weekly and I don't think zoo runs it at all). expire -c doesn't remove nor archive any files, it just checks that explist and active are okay, generating error messages (and I assume bad status) if not. expire(8) really does say this. >If i get an article that is posted to two newsgroups, one which i get >and one which I don't, C News will put it into the first group >on the newsgroups: line (creating the directory if necessary), regardless >of whether or not this group is in my sys file. If an article is accepted for filing by relaynews (because your machine's (sys file) subscription list matched at least one newsgroup in the article's Newsgroups: line), relaynews will then attempt to file the article in all the groups in the Newsgroups: line. (We shall ignore the precise rules for junking here; see relaynews(8) if you are interested.) Since the active file (which should really be called "groups", not "active") defines the set of newsgroups accepted locally, it is consulted during filing; it is assumed that if you don't want a group, you either have its flag field set to "x" (meaning don't junk, just ignore) OR you don't have it in your active file and your subscription list refuses it. Leaving a group un-x'ed in your active file even if refused by your subscription list will cause occasional cross-posted articles to be filed in that group, and leaving it permitted by your sys file but not in active may result in the article being junked. >When I first tried to build C News with dbz, I got a segmentation fault >in dbz hash(). I rebuilt with dbm and all was OK. I am guessing that >i needed to do a mkhistory before posting to the newly created C News >with dbz, but have not confirmed this theory. Since dbm and dbz use completely different file formats, you have to pick one and use it consistently everywhere. The core dump in dbz is one reason that we have been a bit slow to pick it up and endorse it, though some time we hope to have an improved dbz which we will endorse. >Looking through the code, you see things like 'super-kludge for B News >backward compatability' all over the place. Wouldn't it be great if >every one would agree C News is 'the' news software, and all this could >be ripped out. The only kludges that come to mind immediately are inews -C, Supersedes:, foo.bar.ctl, Subject: cmsg, (unbatched) ihave/sendme, and "internet" and "backbone" in mailpaths. All but "backbone" are related to control messages, which provide much of the complication in news software anyway. inews -C we plan to deal with in the next patch. Supersedes: only affects comp.mail.maps and can either be handled by expiring comp.mail.maps faster than normal or by running superkludge from crontab. foo.bar.ctl is recommended by RFC 1036 so we chose to support it rather than say "C news conforms to RFC 1036 except for the following kludges: ..."; it is truly ugly and utterly unnecessary, but god only knows how many newsreaders rely upon it. "Subject: cmsg " is even worse, but RFC 1036 requires that it be recognised. Unbatched ihave/sendme is a bad idea and the description of ihave/sendme in RFC 1036 is so ethereal that I don't think it can be read as requiring unbatched ihave/sendme. Batched ihave/sendme isn't a lot better, but we had to provide some form of ihave/sendme to get the 1036 Goodhousekeeping Seal of Approval, it's only three pages of code, and I was waiting for Henry anyway. "internet" doesn't really belong in mailpaths (which should really be called "modroutes"), it was nailed on the side, but this brings up the whole ugly subject of Path: vs From: for replies. "backbone" means "all"; it's just silly syntactic sugar. -- Geoff Collyer utzoo!utstat!geoff, geoff@utstat.toronto.edu