Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!neat.ai.toronto.edu!moraes
From: moraes@ai.toronto.edu (Mark Moraes)
Subject: C News log file
Message-ID: <89Jun27.222123edt.11708@neat.ai.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
References: <2228@vicom.COM> <1989Jun20.211939.7835@utzoo.uucp> <4657@ficc.uu.net>
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 89 22:21:14 EDT

(Some info for those who haven't seen C News log files and are
speculating about it)

C News uses one line for each message. Most lines are close to 80
characters long, and seem to contain just enough information. An
extract from our log file:

Jun 27 03:36:31.200 smoke.brl.mil - <32694@apple.Apple.COM> duplicate
Jun 27 03:41:18.700 vmb.brl.mil - <832@helios.toronto.edu> duplicate
Jun 27 03:50:48.140 utgpu + <648@dptcdc.toronto.datapoint.com> utstat me
Jun 27 03:50:50.560 utgpu + <1305@garcon.cso.uiuc.edu> utstat dptcdc me qucis mailrus rutgers
Jun 27 03:50:51.980 utgpu + <27387@watmath.waterloo.edu> utstat me

+ or - indicates accepted or rejected, duplicate means just that, the
list of host names after the message id for a + articles indicates the
sites to which it was queued for onward transmission.

Adding more information is probably not hard - just a question of
printf() for log info or fprintf() for errlog info in relaynews. Dig
out the trusty old editor, edit the C code, and recompile.

In article <4657@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
> I want to be able to look in the log file and see:
>
>	Each message.

Implied by the line in the log file.

>	Where it came from.

Yep. That's there. Also the date and time, which is handy for
determining news flow and speed.

>	What newsgroups it was in.

Nope.

In the history file - do a lookup by message id. (What, you don't have
cut and paste ? :-)

>	What the subject was.

Nope. Not likely to be added, either, I suspect.

As far as the news transport is concerned, the Subject of an article
is entirely unimportant - I think it is best left that way. transport
should not concern itself with contents of the news any more than it
can help it.

>	Whether it was duplicate.

Yep. That's there.

>	Where it was forwarded to.

Yep. That too is there.

>	And any errors that occurred.

Not in log.

That's what the errlog is for. It's usually empty, anyway. (:-)