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- Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.answers
- From: linimon@nominil.lonesome.com (Mark Linimon)
- Subject: News.software.b Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- References: <software_b_intro_770454615@nominil.lonesome.com>
- Followup-To: poster
- Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu
- Organization: Lonesome Dove Computing Services
- Date: Wed, 1 Jun 1994 07:10:23 GMT
- Supersedes: <software_b_faq_768035415@nominil.lonesome.com>
- Message-ID: <software_b_faq_770454615@nominil.lonesome.com>
- Summary: Answers to news software frequently asked questions (periodic posting)
- Expires: Wed, 13 Jul 1994 07:09:47 GMT
- X-Posting-Frequency: every 4 weeks
- Reply-To: linimon@nominil.lonesome.com
- Lines: 678
- Xref: bloom-beacon.mit.edu news.software.b:4592 news.answers:20299
-
- Archive-name: usenet/software/b/faq
- Version: 1.08 (March 1994)
- Last-Modified: Fri Mar 4 17:38:15 EST 1994
-
- This posting provides answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) encountered
- in news.software.b.
-
- A companion posting, "C News Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)"
- <software_b_cnews_770454615@nominil.lonesome.com>, provides
- information about commonly encountered dilmemmas specifically related to
- the C News package. Yet another posting, "News.software.b: Introduction to
- news.software.b" <software_b_intro_770454615@nominil.lonesome.com>,
- serves as an introduction to the group.
-
- Related postings are maintained by Tom Limoncelli <tal@Warren.MENTORG.COM>:
- "INN FAQ Part 1/4: General Information"; "INN FAQ Part 2/4: Debugging Guide
- & Tutorial"; "INN FAQ Part 3/4: Operational and Misc. Questions"; and "INN
- FAQ Part 4/4: Appendix A: Norman's install guide". Another is maintained
- by Rob Robertson <rob@agate.Berkeley.EDU> and entitled "FAQ: Overview
- database / NOV General Information."
-
- All these articles are repeated periodically for the benefit of new readers.
-
- (Another set is being drafted by Ian Phillipps <ian@unipalm.co.uk> for
- news.admin.technical; at this point this is a "work in progress".)
-
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Subject: Table of contents.
-
- Subject: What is the charter of news.software.b?
- Subject: What is considered good net.etiquette on news.software.b?
- Subject: What is meant by news transports versus news readers?
- Subject: What news transports are available?
- Subject: What is the release status of C News? Where can I get it?
- Subject: What is the release status of INN? Where can I get it?
- Subject: What is the release status of B News? Where can I get it?
- Subject: What do I do if I am having trouble with C News?
- Subject: What do I do if I am having trouble with INN?
- Subject: What do I do if I am having trouble with B News?
- Subject: Is there documentation to aid administering news?
- Subject: What's the 'junk' newsgroup for? Should I propogate it?
- Subject: What is an RFC? Which are the relevant ones?
- Subject: Are there advantages of INN over C News?
- Subject: Why do C News and INN drop non-conforming articles?
- Subject: But why can't the poster be mailed a notice when this happens?
- Subject: So how can I find out if sites drop my articles as non-conforming?
- Subject: Couldn't we just fix articles by rewriting erroneous headers?
- Subject: What do C News and INN do with articles with no Distribution?
- Subject: Wouldn't it save space to compress stored news?
- Subject: What can I do to prevent running out of inodes in spool?
- Subject: Are there any tools for newsgroup moderators?
- Subject: Has anyone implemented "private" newsgroups using C News or INN?
- Subject: Can the news transport validate cancel messages?
- Subject: What is NOV? Where can I get it?
- Subject: What are related newsgroups for news transports and readers?
- Subject: Is news.software.b archived anywhere?
- Subject: Is news.software.b available as a mailing list?
- Subject: Why isn't this newsgroup named news.software.transports?
- Subject: Contributions to news.software.b FAQ.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: What is the charter of news.software.b?
-
- The charter of news.software.b is to serve as the chief newsgroup for
- technical questions about installing, using, and improving the "transport"
- layer of the netnews software used on USENET.
-
- Note that the listing in the canonical "newsgroups" file is:
-
- news.software.b Discussion about B-news-compatible software.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: What is considered good net.etiquette on news.software.b?
-
- Here are some etiquette reminders that will help us all to make the group
- an ever-friendlier place:
-
- -- Please, before posting, ensure that you've read the basic Usenet
- etiquette guide in news.announce.newusers.
-
- -- Please consider the news.software.b readership before you post. Consider
- news.admin.misc for general questions about site administration, and
- news.software.readers for questions about news-*reading* programs.
-
- -- When following up, please change the Subject: line if the subject has
- really changed.
-
- -- Some newsgroups have adopted the practice of using prefixes on Subject:
- lines to help readers select articles of interest, e.g.
-
- Subject: C News: How do I rebuild the history file?
- Subject: INN: How do I do outbound batching for UUCP?
-
- [In this author's opinion, this is a practice that should be encouraged.]
-
- -- Remember that USENET is a volunteer network. All the code, maintenance,
- and question-answering are maintained by folks who freely give their time
- to help the net. Please consider this and treat them accordingly. Be
- as precise as possible so that overworked knowledgeable people will not
- waste time trying to solve the wrong problem.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: What is meant by news transports versus news readers?
-
- The news transport mechanism is the code which receives, process, and
- forwards netnews. The news readers (and news posters) allow human users
- to interact with the news database built by the transport. The news
- transports themselves interact with underlying communications code,
- commonly either NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol) or UUCP.
-
- Expiration is typically handled by the transport mechanism.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: What news transports are available?
-
- The following is abstracted from the article "USENET Software: History
- and Sources" posted in news.announce.newusers (and cross-posted to
- news.software.b) every 4-6 weeks. It is a much more exhaustive survey
- of available transports and readers.
-
- The original news software was just called news; once a rewrite called
- B News became available, the original version became known as A News.
- A News is totally obsolete. B News, although still installed on many
- sites across the net, is also obsolete and no longer being maintained.
- In fact, the last maintainer now uses INN.
-
- Currently-maintained news software includes, among others, the C News
- package and INN (InterNetworkNews package). See below for descriptions
- of each of these packages. (The ANU-news package is discussed on
- news.software.anu-news, also see below).
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: What is the release status of C News? Where can I get it?
-
- Henry Spencer:
- The current C News distribution can currently always be retrieved by
- anonymous ftp from ftp.cs.toronto.edu in file pub/c-news/c-news.Z (a shell
- archive) or pub/c-news/c-news.tar.Z (a tar archive) and the complete set
- of patches can also be found on ftp.cs.toronto.edu in the directory
- pub/c-news/patches. FTP during our peak hours (12h00-17h00 Eastern) is
- not encouraged.
-
- The current C News patch date is 20-Feb-1993. It is referred to as the
- "Performance Release."
-
- (It is also available on UUNET as ~/news/cnews/c-news.Z or c-news.tar.Z.
- See also the files ~/news/cnews/README and ~/news/cnews/known.problems.
- known.problems reports installation problems and bugs that have been
- discovered in the current version. It also includes fixes to those problems.)
-
- FAQs)"
- <software_b_cnews_770454615@nominil.lonesome.com>, for information
- about upcoming releases).
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: What is the release status of INN? Where can I get it?
-
- Rich Salz:
- The official archive site is ftp.uu.net, networking/news/nntp/inn. Many
- other sites have copies, too; ask archie. Look for file inn1.X.tar.Z,
- where "1.X" is the revision. Patches and new versions made as needed
- and as I have available time. The next revision will be 1.5; no public
- date.
-
- [See Tom Limoncelli's FAQs for the latest version and bugfix information.]
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: What is the release status of B News? Where can I get it?
-
- B News is no longer either supported or used by its author, and new
- installations are strongly discouraged. The last release was patchlevel
- 19 of version 2.11, of Oct 30, 1989. Note: if your site hasn't even
- installed the last version released, you really must give serious and
- immediate consideration to upgrading to a package that works according
- to modern standards.
-
- Rick Adams:
- B news is dead. Don't encourage its use.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: What do I do if I am having trouble with C News?
-
- This is covered in more detail in the companion posting, "C News Frequently
- Asked Questions (FAQs)" <software_b_cnews_770454615@nominil.lonesome.com>;
- however, your first steps should be as follows: consult the manual pages
- and descriptions in doc/trouble. (If you don't have doc/trouble, you
- either have an ancient version of C News and should upgrade, or someone
- installed a partial distribution). If you can't find an answer there,
- see if there is a fix or workaround in the file called "known.problems".
- If this still fails to answer your question, try the "Implementor's
- Notebook" files in doc/* (start with the README).
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: What do I do if I am having trouble with INN?
-
- First, consult the manual pages. There is also an installation guide
- (Install.ms) that is very valuable.
-
- See also the two separate FAQ postings in this newsgroup just about INN,
- maintained by Tom Limoncelli <tal@Warren.MENTORG.COM>: "INN FAQ Part 1/3:
- General Information, how to compile, how to operate"; "INN FAQ Part 2/3:
- Tutorial on installing"; and "INN FAQ Part 3/3: Tutorial on debugging and
- adding options."
-
- Only if these all fail to answer your questions should you post to
- news.software.b.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: What do I do if I am having trouble with B News?
-
- If the documentation you have with it doesn't help you, you had better
- ask for help here, because it's no longer being maintained by its author.
- However, (especially if you don't even have the last release of B News!),
- don't be surprised if the answer is, "can't be done, install C News or INN!"
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: Is there documentation to aid administering news?
-
- There is a commercially-published book, "Managing UUCP and USENET", from
- O'Reilly and Associates <nuts@ora.com> (+1 800 338 6887 or +1 707 829 0515),
- that many readers have recommended. The latest edition of this book
- discusses the NNTP protocol and the NNTP implementation maintained by
- Stan Barber, commonly known as the "reference implementation" (nntp1.5);
- but it does not yet talk about INN. This book has a companion volume,
- "Using UUCP and USENET", that is more oriented to users.
-
- A rewrite of these two books is currently being done by Henry Spencer
- (the C News portion) and Dave Lawrence (the INN portion). Their book
- will become the volume on both using and managing USENET news; the
- tentative release date is set for late 1994. (Note: bugging either of
- these busy folks won't get it done faster :-) ) [O'Reilly may rearrange
- the other material into a companion volume that would cover both using
- and managing UUCP; plans are less definitely.]
-
- For the impatient, you can subscribe to the O'Reilly announcements list
- by sending a message to listproc@online.ora.com with the first line:
-
- subscribe ora-news Your Name at Your Organization
-
- The Subject: line will be ignored.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: What's the 'junk' newsgroup for? Should I propogate it?
-
- The junk newsgroup contains all the postings which the news transport
- can't file under a newsgroup name. These can include malformed postings
- (either as result of human, software, or transmission error); postings to
- bogus groups; postings to groups that have been deleted; postings to new
- groups that you haven't added yet; and postings to groups that you don't
- carry at your site, and don't intend to.
-
- Some admins see it as friendly to transmit junk to your neighbors, to cover
- the latter two cases. However, common practice is to expire junk almost
- immediately afterwards.
-
- If you're getting lots of postings in junk, it may mean that the combination
- of your sys file, your active file, and your neighbors' sys files, are not
- doing what you intend them to.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: What is an RFC? Which are the relevant ones?
-
- An RFC (Request For Comment) is a formal mechanism used to describe communi-
- cations standards for the Internet and systems (like USENET) that are closely
- tied to it. The relevant RFCs for news include:
-
- 1123 Requirements for Internet hosts - application and support. Braden, R.T.,
- ed. 1989 October; 98 p. (Format: TXT=245503 bytes) (Updated by RFC
- 1349)
-
- (A small part of this long RFC is relevant to news: it amends RFC 822 so
- that, in dates, a 4-digit year is no longer prohibited, but is preferred;
- and that numeric time zone names are suggested).
-
- 1036 Horton, M.R.; Adams, R. Standard for interchange of USENET messages.
- 1987 December; 19 p. (Format: TXT=46891 bytes) (Obsoletes RFC 850)
-
- (This is the most relevant of this set, to this newsgroup. Note: an effort
- is currently underway to revise and update RFC 1036 to better reflect modern
- practice. A *long* (53pp.) draft proposal of this "Son-of-RFC-1036" is
- available for anonymous ftp from zoo.toronto.edu in file pub/news.txt.Z. As
- above, FTP during their peak hours (12h00-17h00 Eastern) is not encouraged.)
-
- 977 Kantor, B.; Lapsley, P. Network News Transfer Protocol. 1986
- February; 27 p. (Format: TXT=55062 bytes)
-
- 976 Horton, M.R. UUCP mail interchange format standard. 1986 February;
- 12 p. (Format: TXT=26814 bytes)
-
- 822 Crocker, D. Standard for the format of ARPA Internet text messages.
- 1982 August 13; 47 p. (Format: TXT=109200 bytes) (Obsoletes RFC 733)
-
- Online copies of RFCs are available via FTP or Kermit from NIC.DDN.MIL as
- rfc:rfc####.txt or rfc:rfc####.ps (#### is the RFC number without leading
- zeroes).
-
- Additionally, RFCs may be requested through electronic mail from the
- with a subject line of "RFC ####" for text versions or a subject line
- of "RFC ####.PS" for PostScript versions. To obtain the RFC index,
- the subject line of your message should read "RFC index".
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: Are there advantages of INN over C News?
-
- It depends on whose religion you believe in more strongly :-)
-
- Rich Salz:
- They are targeted for different environments, although both systems seem
- to work fairly well outside of their targets.
-
- INN is designed for hosts on the Internet with a fair amount of memory and
- multiple fast incoming NNTP feeds. It's a full USENET system, but most
- traffic is NNTP. (E.g., rnews unpacks a batch and sends it to the server
- via NNTP.) If you do NNTP, you'll find it easier to maintain the one
- single system, rather than two. Also, posting is synchronous -- when
- inews returns, the article has been written to disk and queued for
- forwarding. [By comparison, C News is asynchronous -- Mark.] INN puts
- a low, constant, load on your machine.
-
- Several people run INN on UUCP-only machines.
-
- David Myers:
- Whether or not you use NNTP may influence your decision. If you wish to
- use NNTP internally, then with C News you have to also install the standard
- NNTP package. [Don't confuse this package, named "nntp", with the NNTP
- protocol itself! It's just one implementation -- Mark.] This may or may
- N, you get
- it all in one package.
-
- Geoff Collyer:
- This should cease to be an issue once we ship the Cleanup Release, which
- will contain an NNTP implementation.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: Why do C News and INN drop non-conforming articles?
-
- Henry Spencer:
- Dropping of nonconforming articles is partly a necessity, since some
- classes of nonconformance can cause major screwups in other news systems.
- (Almost all the tightening of checking has been due to pressure from
- others, not [Geoff's and my] own inclinations.) In any case, (a) we hope
- this is a [transient] thing that will become insignificant when people
- clean up their act, and (b) you can (in principle) determine whether this
- will happen to an article by a simple and objective standard. Dropping
- articles due to local configuration errors is much more insidious; one
- thing that is very clear from our experience so far is that news software
- *must not* assume competent and conscientious sysadmins.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: But why can't the poster be mailed a notice when this happens?
-
- Mark Brader:
- This would be desirable if the poster could be notified just once, or
- a small number of times, but there is no way to enforce this. An article
- may enter the network through a chain of sites, each feeding just one
- other, or it may immediately reach a site that feeds it to a large number
- of others, and there's no way to tell what software the other sites that
- processed it were using. Thus, there'd be no way to tell whether an
- earlier site on the path, or 200 other sites served by the same feed,
- had already mailed such a diagnostic.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: So how can I find out if sites drop my articles as non-conforming?
-
- Several major sites post summaries of articles dropped at their site as
- non-conforming, usually including article Message-ID:s and the reason for
- non-conformance.
-
- These include:
-
- Newsgroups: news.lists,news.admin.misc
- From: rsalz@rodan.UU.NET (Rich Salz)
- Subject: Articles rejected at news.uu.net during the past week
- Organization: UUNET Communications
-
- The articles listed below were rejected by InterNetNews at
- news.uu.net during the past week because they do not conform to
- standard interpretation of Internet RFCs 822 and 1036. [...]
- news.uu.net is also configured to reject articles that are more
- than 14 days old.
-
- [Reasons for rejecting include: duplicate header; no article body;
- illegal header (e.g., not in word-colon-space format); unapproved
- article posted to a moderated group; whitespace in "Newsgroups"
- header; required header missing; posting with "Distribution: local";
- bad "Date" header; "Date" header in future (when received); invalid
- Message-ID.
-
- Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
- From: kherron@ms.uky.edu (Kenneth Herron)
- Subject: Non-compliant articles, week ending DD Month YY
-
- The following is a list of articles which were dropped by the
- news software here for a non-compliant header. [Reasons: header
- contains non-header line; unapproved article in moderated group;
- message ID not bracketed with <>; no Subject or empty Subject;
- no From: header; no Date or unparsable Date; date in future (when
- received).
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: Couldn't we just fix articles by rewriting erroneous headers?
-
- Henry Spencer:
- We [Geoff and I] are vehemently, nay violently, opposed to ever rewriting
- headers in any circumstances whatsoever. It's soooo easy to do more harm
- than good. We also don't think it's that big a favor to people to help-
- fully fix up their misposted articles without any feedback to them.
-
- [FAQ author's note: I would be interested in collaborating with anyone who
- has done some work on this problem at the article-injection point. -- Mark]
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: What do C News and INN do with articles with no Distribution?
-
- Henry Spencer:
- C News treats no distribution as completely equivalent to
- "Distribution: world", and this *is* documented.
-
- Rich Salz:
- For all intents and purposes, INN treats treats articles without a
- Distribution header the same way C News does. If the article has no
- such header, then distribution is NOT limited, so the article should
- go everywhere by default.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: Wouldn't it save space to compress stored news?
-
- Henry Spencer:
- There are three fundamental problems that have always pretty much scuttled
- proposals for article compression.
-
- One is that it saves space at the expense of CPU time, and CPU time is
- not always in ample supply on news hosts.
-
- A much more serious problem is: how *much* space does it save? Bear in
- mind that news articles are small -- they consistently average about
- 3KB -- and small files do not compress particularly well. Worse, the
- quantum of disk storage on many systems is quite large. If you compress
- the typical article from 3K-1 bytes to 2K+1 bytes, most modern systems
- will see *no storage savings at all*, because they allocate disk in
- 1KB blocks.
-
- The final problem is that an improvement by a factor of (say) 1.5 does
- not buy you a lot of time in the news business. In exchange for a lot
- of work and a permanently raised CPU load, you set the growth curve
- back a few months.
-
- Geoff Collyer:
- A more general solution than hacking all the news software, that also
- benefits ftp archives and the like, is to write a user-mode (NFS) file
- server for /usr/spool/news (and /usr/spool/ftp, etc.) that compresses
- files as they are written (after the close for non-sequential writes) and
- decompresses files when they are read (the entire file will have to be
- uncompressed temporarily into scratch space for non-sequential reads).
- Such a server provides compression transparently and is in a good
- position to decide that very small files should not be compressed because
- there is little or no benefit to doing so. Keeping the server in user
- mode avoids the horror of embedding compress in kernel code.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: What can I do to prevent running out of inodes in spool?
-
- When you lay out your spool file system (the one that holds the actual
- articles) with newfs, you'll need to change its defaults to account for
- the different ratio of typical file size/number of inodes typically
- found on news spool disks.
-
- Articles typically run about 3000 bytes per inode. The default for a
- UFS (BSD fast) file system is 2K bytes/inode which should be sufficient.
- But "mkfs" will silently limit the number of inodes in a cylinder group
- so some disk formats wind up with too few inodes. Using smaller cylinder
- groups is a solution to this problem. The following is a typical command
- for creating a new spool/news file system:
-
- newfs -c 8 -f 512 -b 4096 diskname
-
- Using a cylinder group size of 8 allows up to double the number of inodes
- that the default group size of 16 permits. Note that using 512 byte
- fragments will allow about 20% more articles than the default 1K due to
- the small size of the average article. In any case verify the bytes/inode
- is below 3K before using the file system!
-
- Old style Unix file sytems are limited the 65K inodes total. The
- only work around is to create several smaller partitions such that
- each file system has <= 3Kbytes/inode. Then split the news groups
- into the various file system to equalize usage as evenly as possible.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: Are there any tools for newsgroup moderators?
-
- Kent Landfield <kent@sparky.sterling.com> maintains an archive of
- moderator-contributed tools on sparky.sterling.com under /moderators.
- What follows is an extract of the Index file for that archive:
-
- This directory contains tools written and used by moderators of USENET
- newsgroups.
-
- The contents of this archive have been generously made available in an "AS
- IS" condition. Many of the sources, scripts and yes, documents are not as
- pretty as the individual moderators may like but they work and are being
- used. The idea is that the archive is a snapshot of tools used. They are
- done and potentially get a
- copy as a starting point for their newsgroup's required modifications.
-
- The following is a listing of the current contents of the archive. I have
- currently unbundled the individual archives. The permissions of the unbundled
- files have been modified.
-
- [In the index, the list of files follows -- Mark].
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: Has anyone implemented "private" newsgroups using C News or INN?
-
- David Beckemeyer:
- What I want by saying a "private" newsgroup is a local newsgroup that
- is only viewable by certain users, probably based on GID. I suppose
- this means that relaynews would have to use a different umask and group
- ownership on articles in these groups.
-
- Tom Limoncelli:
- cd /var/spool/news/secret/newsgroup
- chown news .
- chgrp membersonly .
- chmod o= .
-
- That's all you have to do. Same story for INN users.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: Can the news transport validate cancel messages?
-
- Henry Spencer:
- Nothing short of cryptographic authentication is a real solution, and
- even there, there are some tricky problems. There are times when you
- *want* someone other than the author to be able to cancel an article,
- e.g. when the article was posted maliciously and real problems can be
- averted by getting rid of it. In cases of things like copyright
- violation, it is very important that cancel work.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: What is NOV? Where can I get it?
-
- Geoff Collyer:
- The news overview (nov) database is a textual database of some news
- article headers, and is intended to replace the voluminous binary
- databases (with associated byte-order swapping hassles) maintained by
- newsreaders such as nn and trn, one database per newsreader. The nov
- database and the reference access library are extensible, and the
- database is sharable by multiple newsreaders and relatively cheap to
- maintain. The reference access library will perform on-the-fly threading,
- which is cheap enough to make storing thread links on disk pointless.
-
- I have done no work on making nov databases accessible via NNTP, since I
- think NNTP is the wrong way to read news, but others have. I cannot act
- as a central clearinghouse for information on nov over NNTP; sorry.
-
- Here's world.std.com:src/news/README.nov:
-
- If you've come here looking for the news overview database software (nov),
- pick up *.dist.tar.Z, which includes the nov library and support software
- and nov-ised proof-of-concept versions of vnews, nn and trn. These
- versions of the newsreaders aren't guaranteed to get all the details
- right; you'll have to wait for official releases incorporating nov
- support from the various reader maintainers for that.
-
- Previously, the "P" command in nov-ised nn didn't go back a group and
- nov-ised nn wanted to read a MASTER or GROUP file rather than active.
- Wolfgang Rupprecht sent me patches that appear to fix these defects and I
- have incorporated them into the nov-ised nn distribution.
-
- [Note: this subject is now more extensively coverd in the posting maintained
- by Rob Robertson <rob@agate.Berkeley.EDU> entitled "FAQ: Overview database
- / NOV General Information." -- Mark]
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: What are related newsgroups for news transports and readers?
-
- Other news transports:
- news.software.anu-news VMS B-news software from Australian National Univ.
-
- Lower-level communication code:
- news.software.nntp The Network News Transfer Protocol.
- (This is an INET group, so not everyone has it.)
- comp.mail.uucp Mail in the uucp network environment.
-
- News readers:
- news.software.readers Discussion of software used to read network news.
- (Used when no reader-specific group is available.)
- news.software.nn Discussion about the "nn" news reader package.
- news.software.notes Notesfile software from the Univ. of Illinois.
- (Some consider this to be obsolete for Usenet use.)
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: Is news.software.b archived anywhere?
-
- Not that I'm aware of.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: Is news.software.b available as a mailing list?
-
- Not that I'm aware of.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: Why isn't this newsgroup named news.software.transports?
-
- Historically, the group acquired its name when the B News transport
- software predominated. Since C News was introduced, no one has ever
- managed to forge a consensus as to whether a better name would be
- news.software.transport (which might be a more generally descriptive
- name) or news.software.transport_s_ (which would dovetail better with
- news.software.readers).
-
- At some point, some brave soul will probably pick either one, post an RFD
- (Request for Discussion) to rename it and alias the old name, and voila!
-
- However, Mark Brader offered the following curmudgeonly rebuttal:
- I don't think that's really it. I think it's more a case of leaving
- well enough alone.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: Contributions to news.software.b FAQ.
-
- Thanks to the following for contributions, additions, corrections, and updates:
-
- Rick Adams <rick@uunet.uu.net>
- Jerry Aguirre <jerry@strobe.ATC.Olivetti.Com>
- David Beckemeyer <david@bdt.com>
- Mark Brader <msb@sq.com>
- Geoff Collyer <geoff@world.std.com>
- Christopher Davis <ckd@kei.com>
- Paul Eggert <eggert@twinsun.com>
- Marc G Fournier <marc@r-node.hub.org>
- Kenneth Herron <kherron@ms.uky.edu>
- Kent Landfield <kent@sparky.sterling.com>
- David Lawrence <tale@uunet.UU.NET>
- Tom Limoncelli <tal@warren.mentorg.com>
- David Myers <dem@meaddata.com>
- Ian Phillipps <ian@unipalm.co.uk>
- Rich Salz <rsalz@rodan.UU.NET>
- Henry Spencer <henry@zoo.toronto.edu>
-
- This posting, like much of Usenet, is maintained on a purely volunteer
- basis. I welcome reactions, additions, and corrections via email at
- linimon@nominil.lonesome.com.
- --
- Mark Linimon / Lonesome Dove Computing Services / linimon@lonesome.com
- "He pulled out his fiddle and he rosined up his bow,
- and he played a little tune called the New Cut Road."
-