Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!lsuc!eci386!clewis From: clewis@eci386.uucp (Chris Lewis) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: usenet distributions Message-ID: <1989Jul17.181845.4812@eci386.uucp> Date: 17 Jul 89 18:18:45 GMT References: <316@mplex.UUCP> <464@moegate.UUCP> <3387@epimass.EPI.COM> Reply-To: clewis@eci386.UUCP (Chris Lewis) Organization: R. H. Lathwell Associates: Elegant Communications, Inc. Lines: 51 In article Bob Sutterfield writes: >In article <316@mplex.UUCP> fff@mplex.UUCP (Fred Fierling) writes: > I would like to post an article for distribution in West Germany > only, but our /usr/lib/news/distributions file only has codes for > local, na, usa, world, etc. >That's right - distributions are just things that two consenting sites >put into their corresponding sys file lines. > The only way is to mail your article to someone in West Germany and > ask him or her to post the article for you with a German > distribution. Bob goes on to suggest ways of changing sys files on machines to allow newsgroups to pass thru without appearing in the intermediate system's news directories, and suggest of reasons why they cannot be done. There is a very simple way - build a mail alias on the destination distribution that will receive incoming *mail* items and automatically insert them into the *news* network at that point. B news has a utility called "recnews" (or is it recmail? Never mind) that will do this. I imagine that several of the ARPA news lists are gatewayed into USENET this way. It doesn't require the co-operation (other than mail services and loading) of any intermediate sites. The difficulties being, of course, that there is no "standard" for this, and there aren't many (if any) of these set up - (eg: what alias on what machine corresponds to the "germany" distribution?). And besides, the target network may not appreciate getting additional stuff in their network... And chances are there's no way to get followup's back. For example, some years ago, someone in Australia was receiving a copy of "rec.chess" by a sys entry on one of the machines I managed news on that forwarded articles by mail to him. For a test, I changed the mail destination to point at a recnews alias he set up, so that not only did rec.chess articles go to him and go into his news system, he rebroadcast it out into the Australian network. We tested it for one day (maybe two articles) and we got flamed (gently I may add) for wasting money on other sites... Quite rightly as it turns out. So, we turned it off and he continued receiving it by mail. (though, of course he could have made it a local-only newsgroup) If you want to send something to another distribution, send it to someone on that distribution and have them post. Under-the-table automatic insertion of articles into other "domains" (particularly when structured like EUNET) is, ultimately, quite rude. -- Chris Lewis, R.H. Lathwell & Associates: Elegant Communications Inc. UUCP: {uunet!mnetor, utcsri!utzoo}!lsuc!eci386!clewis Phone: (416)-595-5425