Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsfcgl!cca.ucsf.edu!wet!epsilon
From: epsilon@wet.UUCP (Eric P. Scott)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: distribution limits and macros
Summary: distributions are governed by the "sys" file
Message-ID: <527@wet.UUCP>
Date: 9 Sep 89 22:29:17 GMT
References: <2529@hp-sdd.hp.com> <1989Sep8.072603.4601@twwells.com>
Reply-To: epsilon@wet.UUCP (Eric P. Scott)
Organization: Wetware Diversions, San Francisco
Lines: 58

In article <1989Sep8.072603.4601@twwells.com> bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells) writes:
>In article <2529@hp-sdd.hp.com> martya@hpsdl39.UUCP (Marty Albini) writes:
>:       In the software I use (rn) there is a provision for limitting
>: distribution so a bicycle for sale in Oakland doesn't get advertised
>: in Nepal. This is a great idea, and I'd love to use it, but I can't
>: find a list of abreviations for various localities
>
>To get a list of those distributions, just run Pnews. It will give
>you a list of distributions to choose from. You can select just one
>of them.

If your netnews software was properly installed ("ask your news
administrator") there will be a file called distributions,
usually in the /usr/lib/news directory.  This is what ours looks
like:

local		Local to this site
ba		Everywhere in the San Francisco Bay Area
ca		Everywhere in California
usa		Everywhere in the USA
na		Everywhere in North America
world		Everywhere on Usenet in the world

However, this is neither a complete list, nor the "official"
list.  Which distributions are valid for your site are governed
by the "sys" files on your machine, and those you exchange news
with.  Since the first machine that receives a posting is yours,
you can only post to a distribution your machine will accept.

Here's what the first line of our sys file looks like (folded):

ME:world,comp,sci,news,rec,soc,talk,misc,na,usa,!junk,alt,ba,
	bionet,biz,ca,gnu,pubnet,to::

You should see a list similar to the above--what you should not
see is the word "all"; that's a big no-no.  The rest of the file
directs outgoing news.  Note that it is possible (although
inadvisable) to accept distributions that are not redistributed.
If you were to post to one of those, your machine would accept
the posting, and you would see it posted.  But no one else would,
since it would never leave your site.  (This is one reason why
"all" is bad; it's not the only one, and certainly not the most
serious.)  Your site also shouldn't propagate distributions to
machines that don't accept them.  Neighboring news admins MUST
cooperate for usenet to work effectively.

[Above description for B2.11.14/B2.11.17 w/o NNTP.  Users with
other news transports should check with someone knowledgeable, or
RTFM.]

One more thing--regional/geographic distributions exist by
agreement.  A site could choose not to participate in its
"appropriate regions," or to pick up "foreign" distributions; one
of our users recently asked whether the distribution mechanism
was broken because he was getting replies to "ba" articles from
MIT.  I reassured him that all was well.

					-=EPS=-