Xref: utzoo news.misc:3362 gnu.emacs:1212
Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cica!iuvax!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!indri!uakari!ark1!dsill
From: dsill@ark1.nswc.navy.mil (Dave Sill)
Newsgroups: news.misc,gnu.emacs
Subject: Miscellaneous news questions
Message-ID: <10@ark1.nswc.navy.mil>
Date: 12 Jul 89 17:52:59 GMT
Organization: Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, VA
Lines: 47

Background: I'm new to news, as a reader/poster and as an
administrator.  I've recently brought up news and nntp on a 4.3 BSD.
I've got things nominally working; we have three feeds and have
successfully posted news.  Now for the questions.

1. Which news software should I be using?  Currently I've got B news
version 2.10.3 beta 3/19/86.  I know this isn't the latest, but it's
what comes with 4.3.  Should I use the latest version, and where can I
get it?  Should I use C news?

2. How does one maintain the "active" file?  Do new groups get added
automatically?  If I want to manually add a group that should be
there, or otherwise manually update it, is there any way to lock it
while I'm editing?

3. What is the purpose of the fourth field in the "active" file?  It
seems to be either "y" or "m".

4. Why do readnews and vnews say "too many newsgroups"?  Emacs' rnews
doesn't have any problem.

5. Which Emacs news reader should I use?  Ideally, I'd like to be able
to follow threads, kill threads, skip cross-posted duplicates, update
.newsrc without quiting, search for topics or keywords in groups I may
not subscribe to, and easily subscribe to new groups, as well as the
normal stuff rnews supports.

6. My "distributions" file is empty.  I haven't found any
documentation for it.  What should it have?

7. I've gotten duplicate messages.  Doesn't news recognize the message
ID and ignore duplicates?

8. Is there any way to know whether one is receiving all messages
posted to newsgroup?  I miss knowing that if a message fails to reach
our system, someone somewhere would be notified, as when mail to a
mailing list fails.

9. How many feeds should one have?  Surely one is too few and a
hundred too many; but what's the optimal range?

10. The topic of most newsgroups is apparent from their names, but not
always.  Is there some master list that documents the groups?

Thanks for your time.
-- 
-Dave (dsill@relay.nswc.navy.mil)