Creating New Newsgroups; Differences Between Version 2.9 And 2.10 - Sun Microsystems Sun Workstation 100U System Manager's Manual

USENET Installation and Maintenance
Maintenance
Another task you'll probably have to undertake is clearing up UUCP constipation. If you have
more than one connection, chances are that UUCP will get clogged up when one
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your neigh-
bors goes down for more than a few hours. Varions spooling schemes are being worked on to
help make the news/UUCP system more robust. Right now, UUCP is the weak link in netnews
distribution, and you should certainly keep an eye on it.
8. Creating New Newsgroups
As system news administrator, you can create newsgroups. Before creating a newsgroup, first
make sure this is the right thing to do. Normal etiquette runs as follows: a suggestion is first
posted to net.general,net.news.group for a net newsgroup, followups are made to
net.news.group, it is established if there is general interest in such a group, and a name is
agreed on. Then you (as user "news") can create the newsgroup network-wide by typing the
command:
%
inewa -C new.group
This creates the newsgroup directory and tJetitJe entry loeally. It also prompts you for a para-
graph describing the group, and starts up inew. to post a newgroup control message announcing
the group. This control message is sent out on net.ma •• ctl; other sites may have configured
their systems to do something with these messages. A human readable announcement is not
made - you can post one to net.news.group if you wish.
You should make sure a first article is. posted to the new newsgroup immediately. If this is not
done, checknew. will see the empty newsgroup directory and believe there is unread news (as
each user lacks a ".newsrc" line for the newsgroup).
7. Differences between Version 2.9
and
2.10
Both versions
2.9
and
2.10
are 'B' Versions of USENET format (just to confuse you). Version
2.9
was released with the Sun
0.4
and earlier software distributions; version
2.10
is released with
Sun 1.0 and the current distributions. Differences between versions 2.9 and 2.10 follow; the sec-
tion after this one discusses the differences between versions A and B of the USENET software.
New File Storage Format
The file storage format has been changed.
Rather than storing news in lu.rl.poollnew.lnet.(Jame •. roguellSa, an article now goes in
lu.rl.poollnew.lnetlgame.lroguellea. This allows newsgroup names to be longer than
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characters and still have subgroups. It also makes directories smaller, resulting in faster
performance. The dot files
are
gone: rather than saving the next article number in
I
u.rl .pooll new./.net.game •. rogue as the length of the file, it goes in the active file on the
same line as nei.game •. rogue. Thus, your active file contains lines like
net.games.rogue
00123
where the newsgroup name and the max article number are separated by a space. The arti-
cle numbers are AL WAYS 5 digits long and include the leading digits to do this (this is so
they can be updated in place without growing the active file).
This conversion of directory tree formats has an extra benefit. You'll find that readnetD. is
now considerably faster than in version 2.9. The movement of the dot files accounts for
much of this, since it is no longer necessary to "stat" every dot file. Additionally, a routine
to find a newsgroup in your .netD.rc has been modified to keep the file sorted in the same
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January
1984
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