Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wugate!wupost!kuhub.cc.ukans.edu!sloane
From: SLOANE@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Bob Sloane)
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: Problems creating moderated groups.
Message-ID: <8105@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
Date: 8 Aug 89 15:10:42 GMT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services
Lines: 34

Hi All, 

I just tried to create the new newsgroup news.announce.newgroups which should
be moderated.  I used the command:

NEWS> create newsgroup/mod news.announce.newgroups

but the newsgroup was not created moderated, and no error message was
generated. It turns out that the routine get_input_dflt is having problems
trying to confirm the moderator address.  I have the line:

backbone %s@ucbvax.berkeley.edu in the mailpaths file, so the line
SMG$READ_COMPOSED_LINE was trying to work with was:

Moderator for news.announce.newgroups: news-announce-newgroups@ucbvax.\
berkeley.edu

Which is apparently too long to display, since a 20 (invalid parameter) was
returned. I am not quite sure how to fix this problem, but the group can be
set moderated by specifying an explicit moderator address:

NEWS> create newsgroup/mod=x news.announce.newgroups

and then fixing the moderator address in the mailpaths file by hand.

While I was looking into this problem, I noticed that there were duplicate
entries on the mailpaths file for moderated newsgroups. I don't see this as a
big problem, but eventually, it might cause preformance problems, as the file
gets really large.
+-------------------+-------------------------------------+------------------+
|  Bob Sloane        \Internet: SLOANE@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU/Anything I said is |
|  Computer Center    \ BITNET: SLOANE@UKANVAX.BITNET   / my opinion, not my |
|  University of Kansas\  AT&T: (913) 864-0444         /  employer's.        |
+-----------------------+-----------------------------+----------------------+