Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!hammer.uoregon.edu!news.cc.ukans.edu!not-for-mail From: sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Bob Sloane) Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news,news.answers Subject: FAQ: news.software.anu-news Followup-To: news.software.anu-news Date: 16 May 2004 00:10:00 -0500 Organization: University of Kansas Computing Services Lines: 158 Sender: news@news.cc.ukans.edu Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: news.cc.ukans.edu Summary: frequently asked questions for news.software.anu-news Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu news.software.anu-news:10955 news.answers:271302 Archive-name: anu-faq FAQ for NEWS.SOFTWARE.ANU-NEWS. Last update 24-Aug-1998. This monthly posting is edited by Bob Sloane, University of Kansas. Please send any suggestions for improvement to sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu. 1. What is ANU News? ANU NEWS is a computer-based conferencing system for OpenVMS systems. ANU NEWS can be connected into the Global USENET news network and/or any other news network. ANU NEWS supports both DECnet and TCP/IP (Multinet, WIN/TCP, Ultrix Connection, EXCELAN TCP, and CMU) as transports. The current version of ANU NEWS is 6.2. 2. Purpose of News.software.anu-news The purpose of news.software.anu-news is to discuss any and all ANU NEWS related issues. It is the primary support channel for ANU NEWS users. New versions, fixes, workarounds, etc are posted to the newsgroup. Bug reports/fixes and suggestions for improvement are always welcome. Please always RTFM (Read The Friendly Manual) before posting. 3. How to subscribe On USENET, news.software.anu-news is a regularly available newsgroup. In general, it is preferable to read the newsgroup instead of the mailing list. Email users may send MAIL to LISTSERV@listserv.NoDak.EDU or LISTSERV@NDSUVM1 with the first line of the TEXT or BODY of mail being: SUB ANU-NEWS firstname lastname (e.g. SUB ANU-NEWS John Doe ). 4. Frequently Asked Questions: Q: How do I acquire a copy of ANU News? A: ANU News is available for anonymous FTP from kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Kansas, USA). Other sites may also have it available.. Archives of the mailing list/newsgroup are available via anonymous ftp from listserv.nodak.edu. Patches are available via anonymous ftp from perl.newman.upenn.edu. Q: Does anybody have documentation for ANU News? A: At the anonymous FTP sites, you will find another compressed backup saveset called something like NEWS_V61-BETA10_DOC.ZIP. It contains the documentation for ANU News. Q: What should I do about all these compilation errors in V6.1b10? A: The u_int problem is fixed by an ECO from Cisci/TGV. Ftp to eco.tgv.cisco.com, username anonymous, password decc052h, grab the header files, and put them in [multinet.include.sys]. The getopt problems are cured by editing inpaths.c and changing all strings "getopt" to "my_getopt". You may also need to edit nntpinclude.h and delete the definition of getpeername around line 127 You may also need to edit newsutility.c and delete the definition of sleep. You may still get a few warnings but you can probably ignore them. (Thanks to James Kirkpatrick for this answer) Q: Does ANU News support XOVER in the NNTP Server? A: Well, sort of. There is some simple minded XOVER code in the V6.1b10 server. First, you needed to get patch 950817_NNTP_SERVER.PATCH from the patch archives at perl.newman.upenn.edu and apply it. Then put "#define XOVER" near the beginning of NNTP_SERVER.C and rebuild NEWS. A better version of XOVER support is available in V6.2, but the "#define XOVER" is still needed. Q: NEWS is sending everything I get back to my feed system. What do I do? A: Make sure that the system name in NEWS.SYS matches what your feed system puts in the Path: header. Q: I am remote reading (diskless client) with ANU from a Cnews site and my users regularly crash due to memory problems. A: Verify that NNTP on the Cnews side is returning the correct message numbers on the list command. If not, then ask the remote system's news administrator to run upact on a regular basis to update the number in the active file. Q: How do I connect to an NNTP server? A: Try "news/netsever=newshost/netproto=tcp" where "newshost" is the name of the NNTP server. Note this connects over a TCP/IP network and requires that News was built to support to support that service. Also requires that the server accept a connection from your system. Q: News is awfully slow to start up. Especially for NNTP connections. A: News> set profile/fastload Will configure news to only load those newsgroup in which you are registered. This makes the start up considerably faster but you don't have access to groups you're not registered in. There have been reports of problems such as access violations and hangs when using this feature. Q: News is still slow to start up to an NNTP server. A: News> set profile/display=(unseenstack,nolines,nopost) Will configure news to only show you new articles and will not retrieve the line count or posting date. This is especially useful if you're running off of an NNTP server that doesn't support ANU extensions to NNTP. Retrieving line counts and posting dates is notoriously time consuming. Q: How do I get a signature file appended to my articles? A: News> set profile/signature=file.name Note you should keep your signature file brief -- no more than three lines. Q: How do I get my full name into my return address? A: News> set profile/personal_name="Your Name" Q: I want to use emacs as my editor. A: News> set profile/editor=emacs Note this requires, of course, that you have emacs installed on your system. Q: Command recall doesn't work. A: Of course it does -- use CTRL-B to go back a command. The arrow keys have been bound to other commands. If you would prefer to use the arrow keys for command recall, then do: News> set profile/line_editing Q: Do I need this big newsrc. file? A: News> set profile/rcfilter Will store only the registered groups in your newsrc. file, this makes rewritting the file quicker. Note that this will prevent you from accessing any groups not in your newsrc. file. Q: I want to display groups in a different order. A: News> set profile/rcorder Will display newsgroups in the order they are listed in your newsrc. file -- edit the file to order things accordingly. Q: I have just installed the NEWS server software. When I ran it the first time, I got the message: RMS-E-FNF, file not found RMS-F-IFI, invalid internal file identifier A: Either there is some problem with your NEWS logicals, the NEWS executable is not properly installed, or the account that you started NEWS from the first time doesn't have the NEWS manager id granted to it. Q: I am having problems getting KILL filters to work. A: In some versions of NEWS there is a bug in KILL/FROM. Just do MODIFY KILL n where n is the number of the kill filter that isn't working and delete the from: from the beginning of the filter. -- USmail: Bob Sloane, University of Kansas Computer Center, Lawrence, KS, 66045 E-mail: sloane@ukans.edu http://www.ukans.edu/home/sloane Phone:(785)864-0444 -- -- USmail: Bob Sloane, University of Kansas Computer Center, Lawrence, KS, 66045 E-mail: sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu, Phone: (913) 864-0444, FAX: (913) 864-0485