Cream of the Crop 22/Cream of the Crop 22.iso/bbs/wg961014.zip/WTRGATE.FAQ

Text File | 1996-10-14 | 14KB | 278 lines

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     WaterGate FAQ
     14 October 1996

This is the WaterGate FAQ. It was compiled from the messages I sent
for support. You will find two sections in this FAQ: Informational
and Operational. The first has information about WaterGate itself and
where you can get it and go for support. The second part has answers
about questions that might come up when you use WaterGate.


INFORMATIONAL

Q: What is WaterGate?
A: WaterGate is a message processor. In Fidonet terms, it is a tosser
   that can handle Internet mail and Usenet news as well. Apart from
   distributing messages in Fidonet technology format, it can also do
   the complete distribution of UUCP mail and news. Next, it is a
   gateway between the two formats, allowing Fidonet users transparent
   access to UUCP mail (Internet mail, e-mail, etc.) and all the
   newsgroups.

Q: Where can I go for support?
A: You can send e-mail to [e-mail].

Q: What is the latest release?
A: At the time of this writing, the latest release is 0.92. But, you
   can always send an e-mail to [e-mail] to request
   a text-file with the information about the latest release, the
   patches you can get and other files you can request via e-mail.

Q: Where can I get the latest release?
A: There are several Fido systems where you can file-request it and
   an attempt is made to keep it available at certain FTP sites as
   well.
   The magic name WTRGATE can be used at these Fido sites:
   2:200/111 (SE), 2:280/802 (NL), 1:320/42 (USA), 1:373/26 (USA),
   3:362/15 (Portugal), 2:244/1195 (Germany), 2:2501/307 (UK).
   Anonymous FTP: ftp.nijenrode.nl /pub/watergate,
                  ftp.sbbs.se /pub/watergate
   WWW: http://www.mindport.net/~szarka/brazerko/watergate.html
        http://www.nijenrode.nl/~michel/wsd/wsd.html,
        http://www.htsa.hva.nl/~martijnd/WaterGate

Q: How do I know when a new version is release?
A: Announcements are made on the mailing list [e-mail].
   To connect, write a message to [e-mail] with nothing
   in the body of the message, except "connect watergate".


OPERATIONAL

Q: I am connected to 10 newsgroups, but when WaterGate runs, it
   creates areas for more than 50 newsgroups! And it creates more
   every day!
A: One of its fine options that keeps you from typing a lot! The
   problem is that a news message is always crossposted in more than
   one newsgroup. And WaterGate does not know which of these is the
   one you are connected to. So... it checks all the newsgroup names
   and if they don't exist, they are automatically created. Look at
   the flag "New Area-create" in the user record of your uplink.

Q: The logfile says "Allowing all new newsgroup names"
A: This is because you have not installed a "New newsgroups filter
   file", or there is no ROUTE.TDB file, or there is no NEWSFILTER
   statement in your ROUTE.TDB file, or it could not find that file,
   or that file contains no filter statements.

Q: Log: Allowing ALT.INTERNET.SERVICES (line 0)
A: The "(line 0)" means that it found the rule that allowed it to
   create this area in line 0 of the new newsgroup names filter
   file. It is line 0 because this file is not present.

Q: Log: Incomplete to-address in .X; Using To: header from .D
        Jaap_Aap -> [e-mail]
A: Your provider does NOT put the full e-mail address of the
   recipient in the .X file, which is basically the enveloppe of the
   message. Therefore, WaterGate has to search the .D file for the
   complete recipient address in the To: header. Which takes
   processing time that could have been avoided. Amongst others...
   Talk to your provider!

Q: Log: Incomplete to-address in .X, but To: header from .D is
        unreliable! Adding 1st system domain: Jaap_Brother ->
        [e-mail]
A: Here it gets more serious with the problem I described above. In
   this case the To: header in the .D file did NOT contain a proper
   recipient address. This happens when a list server distributes a
   message to all mailing list subscribers. All recipients simply get
   a copy of the message that was sent to the list. Because of this
   copying, the To: header will not contain the proper e-mail
   address, but something like "[e-mail]", while the
   .X file reads "Jaap_Brother".
   Fortunately, WaterGate does not take the To: line from the .D file
   and send the message there, because it would be sent back to the
   mailing list if it did that. With all disasterous results of doing
   that... so, the only solution left is adding your first system
   domain address and sending the message there.
   If this message was intended for one of your sub-domains (if you
   have any), then the message will not be routed properly, but will
   end up in your netmail area instead... nothing to do about that,
   except for manual routing with a MAP-UUCP statement. See the
   manual for more details about that.

Q: Log: Gating netmail for [e-mail] to mail
        Translation: "Ramon van der Winkel"%2:280/[e-mail]
        -> [e-mail]
A: This line is informational and shows you the translation of a
   Fidonet address to an e-mail address. If the result is not good
   enough, then you could install a mapping statement in the ROUTE.TDB
   file that overrides this default behaviour. The manual has an very
   detailed explanation on the translation of e-mail addresses when
   gating.

Q: How do I assign a nice e-mail addres to a fidonet user.
A: If you don't like the default behaviour, then you can install
   a MAP-UUCP statement in the ROUTE.TDB file. See the manual for
   details on this very complex and powerful statement.
   An bi-directional example:
   MAP-UUCP [e-mail] "Ramon van der Winkel"%2:280/802.33
   Notice that the unregistered version only supports five of these
   statements.

Q: Log: Translating Mail -> Netmail
        Translating Netmail -> Echomail
A: These lines are informational. It shows you how a message is
   routed inside WaterGate. This was probably a message to an
   mailing list. It came in as Mail and was distributed to everybody
   subscribed with an e-mail address. Next, it was translated to
   Netmail and distributed in Fido netmail format. Then, it was
   translated to Echomail and send out in the echomail area. When an
   UUCP style user is connected to that area, it is translated to
   News as well.

Q: Log: Intelligently using old Mail header to build the News header
A: This is another informational log line that has to do with the
   distribution of a mailing list message. When WaterGate had to
   build a news message, it found the original message from the
   incoming Mail. It decided to use a number of the original header
   lines in the News message, instead of creating new header lines
   with system information.

Q: Log: [FidoPktExportMsg] Shrunk too long FromUser_F at export
        Created from FromUser_U: From:
        [e-mail] (gARetH baBB)
A: You configured the Gateway to put the e-mail address in the
   To: header. But, the maximum length of the Fido To: header
   is 36 characters, which is not enough to hold the e-mail
   address, which is 41 characters in this case. WaterGate will
   cut off the e-mail address and write an Sender: line in the
   body of the message.
   This should no longer show up anymore.

Q: The messages I process are not that large, but the swapfile is
   used all the time. When I start WaterGate I have 100kb free.
   Why does WaterGate use the swapfile so "fast"? What can I do to
   reduce the swapfile usage?
A: WaterGate can only use the lower memory area (below 640kb) to
   store a message that it is processing. It only stores one message
   at a time and reads the entire message into memory before it
   starts to distribute it.
   When the free memory runs below 20kb, WaterGate swaps out the
   message part that is in memory, so all memory becomes available
   again to read the next part of the message.
   To reduce the swapfile usage, you have to reduce the amount of
   programs that are loaded in "low" memory, one of which is
   WtrGate itself. You can check which programs are loaded with the
   MS-DOS mem.exe program. If you run it with the argument /c, you
   can see exactly which programs take all the memory. You can
   either try to remove those program or to load them in upper
   memory with the loadhigh statement.
   Regarding WtrGate.exe itself: it is very big (350k) although
   not everything is loaded into memory. If you can't afford the
   memory then you can consider running the Overlayed version
   WtrGate/O. See below.

Q: What is the difference between the overlay version and the normal
   version?
A: Normally a program is complete loaded into memory and all code
   sits there and occupies memory space, whether it is used or not.
   The overlay version only loads code permanently that is used a
   lot. The rest is in the .OVR file instead of the .EXE file. Blocks
   of code that are needed are loaded from the .OVR file and
   discarded (removed from memory) if other code has to be loaded.
   Multiple blocks of code can be loaded at once for efficiency.
   Loading and discarding blocks of code costs a bit of time and
   disk access.
   WtrGate/O is the overlay version. It is 200k smaller as the real
   version and normally reserves 75k of memory to load bits of pieces
   of code into. This means that you get 125k more free memory for
   storing messages or load other programs.
   To reduce disk access, the overlay version tries to load the .OVR
   file into EMS memory so it can copy piece of code from memory
   instead of load it from disk all the time.
   If the .OVR file is used a lot (depending on your configuration),
   then the processing slows down a lot. When you exit WtrGate/O,
   it writes a line to the logfile to indicate the number of loads
   from the .OVR file. If this number is big (>200) then you might
   want to increase the 75k area that is used to load blocks of code.
   You can use -OVR50K and -OVR25K on the command line to increase
   the memory area a bit. This should reduce the load counter, but
   never to 0 though.

Q: What does the following line in the logfile mean:
   [JAM] Trying to work around SubFields length error in ABC (off by 1)
A: There are programs around that do not correctly set a variable in
   the JAM header which indicates the number of bytes of all the
   header lines that follow. If WaterGate detects this, it writes a
   line in the logfile about it and doesn't run into problems anymore.
   This log line means there is an other program around that doesn't
   update the JAM bases properly.
   This is no longer logged.

Q: I have 200 areas. Every time I want to make a change, it takes
   WtrConf about 30 seconds to load and then sort them! What can I do
   about this?
A: Run "wtrutil database". It will remove all deleted areas from the
   database. That should reduce the time to load quite a bit. WtrUtil
   also sorts the database alphabetically, so WtrConf doesn't have to
   do that (every time!).

Q: It is soo much work to connect 200 area for a certain user! Enter
   on <subscribed areas>, press Insert, PgDn to the area you want and
   press Enter. Then Insert again, etc. etc. Can't this be made more
   easy?
A: There are three things already built that make life a lot easier.
   First of all, you can find an area by typing in its name. For
   example, pressing the letter C will move you to the first area
   that starts with a C, etc. etc.
   The second option you have is to "tag" areas. Use F5 to set a mark
   on the area the cursor is currently on. Press F5 again to remove
   it. Then press enter to connect all those areas at once.
   The third option is searching for a specified string and tag all
   matched areas automatically. Use F6, enter a search string and
   press enter. F7 to untag the same way. Just F6 and enter will tag
   all areas. You can use Alt+PgUp/Alt+PgDn to go to the next or
   previous tagged item.

Q: Log: [ListServer] Unknown area "DESIGN" assigned to mailing-list
        "Design". The message will be distributed, but not sent to
        the area.
A: You have configured a mailing list and tried to connect it to an
   area. The mailing list server detected an are when distributing
   a message: the area cannot be found in the Area Definitions.
   Check the spelling of the area name in the Mailing List
   Definition.

Q: Log: Unexpected end of (multi part?) message
A: This has to do with decoding of files from e-mail messages. The
   indicator for the end of the encoded block was not found before
   the end of the message was reached. Decoding failed.
   This normally happens with multi-part encoded messages.
   WaterGate cannot support these type of encoding because it
   handles only one message at a time. You will have to use your
   editor to save all the pieces to disk and then decode them with
   a decoder program.

Q: Log: Mapping: [e-mail] -> [e-mail]
        Found e-mail for 2:200/111.15
   Why does WaterGate change my e-mail address?
A: This is how WaterGate works internally. p15 is part of how a
   Fidonet address is universally specified in an domain address.
   The complete version would be p15.f111.n200.z2.wline.se, but
   irrelevant parts were left out.
   WaterGate detects this p15.<system domain address> later on and
   then gates the message to Fidonet.


End of WaterGate FAQ

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[e-mail].