Subject:
Re: HOWTO on setting up a NewsGroup Server
From:
"Lloyd D Budd" ####@####.####
Date:
5 Aug 2002 14:38:05 -0000
Message-Id: <006601c23c8d$a2142640$ff0da8c0@torolab.ibm.com>
"Shuvam" ####@####.#### sent 20020802 10:12 :
> > I cannot seem to find the draft? Where do I get it off the net?
>
> It's in the usual place, with the rest of the HOWTOs, on www.tldp.org.
> It's called the "Usenet HOWTO", not the "News HOWTO", incidentally. If
> you look through the HOWTO index, you'll see this one listed, towards
> the end.
Ahh...thanks Shuvam! My bad, sometimes I don't look in the most obvious of
places. The content of the HOW-TO is great!
How does one get an archive (as complete as possible) of a Usenet Newsgroup?
For particular newsgroups, I would like to get local copies of all the
articles archived. Is it possible to get such archives from google.com or
elsewhere?
ASIDE: excuse the Windows MS Outlook Express, and any Evil (TM) things that
it does to my email...I am travelling on business and have yet to find time
to set up 'mutt' on MSWin, or get Linux installed.
Reviewed:
$ cksum Usenet-News-HOWTO.pdf
3387244777 138965 Usenet-News-HOWTO.pdf
> Revision 2.0 2002-07-30 Revised by: sm
I was pedantic in my "editing" as it is in my nature...ignore what you will,
as there is are no significant issues.
> Table of Contents (ToC)
The links all go back to the 1st page.
> huge worldwide collection
huge, world-wide collection
> These messages, usually called articles, are posted by readers like you
> and me who have access to Usenet servers, and are then stored on the
Usenet
> servers.
This is the 1st time I have been stored on the Usenet servers! Although,
often termed "articles", it is an ugly term for what is actually posted.
> This ability to both read and write into a Usenet newsgroup makes the
> Usenet very different from the bulk of what people today call ``the
Internet.''
write -> post
for consistency.
> The Internet has become a colloquial term to refer to the World Wide
> Web, and the Web is (largely) read-only.
I disagree.
1. it is not a colloquial term.
2. Instant messaging, and many other Internet services are now being used by
"consumers". Consumers often understand the difference between the Internet
and the WWA.
but yes, the Internet is predominantly read-only.
> There are online discussion groups with Web interfaces, and there are
> mailing lists, but Usenet is probably more convenient than either of these
> for most large discussion communities.
Convenient for whom? It would be better to describe some of the relative
benefits. Offhand:
* the audience is the world, and one tends to receive high quality feedback
* limit on bandwidth "consumption"
* simplicity of format
* diversity in topics
* availability of clients
* access to servers
* anonymity
> This is because the articles get replicated to your local Usenet server
Hmm...this has never been a significant factor for me, or many. Depending on
the size an organization, "local" can be an inaccurate term ;-)
> post articles without accessing the global Internet
Well yes, you can limit the scope of your posting to the Usenet server you
connect to, but not many ppl that I know do this -- nor even know how,
introducing later seems appropriate. The following is a believe an accurate,
and significant factor:
> Usenet articles also conserve bandwidth because they do not
> come and sit in each member's mailbox, unlike email based mailing lists.
> Another nice feature of having your own local Usenet server is that
> articles stay on the server even after you've read them.
I believe this is another artificial factor. What system does not allow
access to articles after they have been read.
> This way, a Usenet server is an excellent way to archive articles of a
> group discussion on a local server without placing the onus of archiving
> on any group member.
Err, another artificial factor, as someone does have to maintain the "Usenet
server", and it seems to be no more or less work than archiving for other
msging systems.
> This way, a Usenet server is an excellent way to archive articles
> of a group discussion on a local server without placing the onus
> of archiving on any group member.
Yes, but not many of the target audience, at least not this early in the
HOW-TO, are interested in this.
> first firing up a Usenet news program,
firing up?
Usenet news client.
> will highly likely
hehe
> Netscape Messenger or Microsoft's Outlook Express.
the Linux Doc Project, hehe...I imagine that the majority of Linux users do
not use either of these clients.
> well-designed character-based
character-based? "command line" would likely be most meaningful to most, or
terminal or cursor
> user agent software
introducing new term :-( client.
> but a proper review of the user agent software is outside the
> scope of this HOWTO, so we will just assume that you are
> using whatever software you like.
Doh! You may have just lost over half your audience. Review no, but
identification, yes please. Hey, what about that ch 10: Usenet news client".
I would like to see this chapter near the beginning. Long before one becomes
an "Usenet admin", one becomes a user. Most people and organizations will
need to experience the benefits of being a user before taking the next
steps, and majority of this doc.
As a result of my view on this, I skipped to Chapter 10.
> to readers of those articles.
readers, although the primary activity, does not describe the value well:
reading and contributing (posting).
> Usenet news servers is to serve these clients.
Pun intended, I imagine. Word choice please.
> discuss issues in UUA software design,
Ick, could that be in the 2nd ch on clients...or just not present that
sentence before "essential features and efficiency and management issues."
> that is best left to specialised catalogues on the Internet.
Could you at least identify one or more of these "specialised catalogues?"
Ugh, that is the end of the content in this chapter. Please, please, give
this chapter the attention that it deserves. For now, back to 1.2
> very specialised networks, very high end servers
Try not to use very so often. It is fill, and loses it's affect. One of the
whole points of Linux is to take the "high end servers" out of the equation.
A specialised network of low-end (Linux) boxes with massive disk arrays
would be sufficient, no?
> After all, how often does a guy have something to say which is relevant
> to the world at large, unless he's discussing a globally relevant topic
like
> ``Unix rules!''?
Ugg, most of the time it seems like the topics are relevant to the world at
large, but that there is desire not to make the discussions available to the
. UNIX is a trademark, and it's should be used carefully.
Previously, she/her was used, know he. I prefer he or she, not he/she, but
switching during the doc is ugly. You do not want to appear that the client
users are "shes" and the admins "hes".
> A Usenet news article sits in a file or in some other on-disk data
structure on the disks of a Usenet server, and its contents look like this.
Ch 10 was talking about databases, I prefer the terminology here.
> the readers and the servers.
Ch 10's term "UUA" was interesting, but did not provide any additional
"value". I still prefer clients over readers for the reason(s) identified
above...but the masses do seem to have standardised on "reader".
> Section XXX titled ``Newsfeeds'' below.
> We usually find that one server will feed the bulk of the world's articles
to one or more secondary servers every day,
Intuitively, I do not see how this can be majority today. I imagine that
yes, there are more downstream servers, but, "one server" feeding?! The
following paragraph seems to agree with my assertion:
> Newsfeeds relay articles from one server to their ``next door neighbour''
> servers, metaphorically speaking. Therefore, articles move around the
> globe, not by a massive number of single-hop transfers from the
> originating server to every other server in the world, but in a sequence
> of hops, like passing the baton in a relay race.
I perused to the beginning of chapter 4...I am thankful to you and the other
contributors as I now feel I have a better understanding of the basics.
Maybe in the not to distant future, I will have some "original" content to
add.
Cheers,
Lloyd
