Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!apple!sun-barr!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!strath-cs!cs.glasgow.ac.uk!jack
From: jack@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: Cancelling Post
Message-ID: <3453@midway.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Date: 21 Sep 89 16:13:49 GMT
References: <1918@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Reply-To: jack@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Organization: COMANDOS Project, Glesga Yoonie, Unthank
Lines: 34
Summary:
Expires:
Sender:
Followup-To:
Keywords:


re4@prism.gatech.EDU (RUSSELL EARNEST) wrote:
  
> I posted an article and when i read it I realized it was messed up. Instead
> of doing a "C" to cancel, as I now know I should have, I exited thinking I
> could "unpost" using postnews.
> Realizing that mistake, I went back to "rn" to pull up the article by number
> and do the proper cancel but since all articles in the group were read, I
> couldn't get into the group. What do I do at that point?

As I said in my previous article on this, people can't count on cancellation
working everywhere.  Some of us have no option but to be careful.


> Also, since I've already read the article, will I be able to pull it up by 
> number once I get into the group?

What I do in situations like this is look in the spool directories; here,
your article is the file /usr/spool/news/news/newusers/questions/107 (use
"egrep" or something similar).  Having found it, edit your .newsrc file to
fool "rn" into believing you haven't read it; i.e. I'd change the line
	news.newusers.questions: 1-110
to read
	news.newusers.questions: 1-106,108-110

(The article number will be different at every site and not everyone will
use /usr/spool/news as the news spool directory).  This isn't the most
efficient way to do it, but knowing the location and format of the raw data
used by "rn" saves you keeping the whole damn manual in your head.
-- 
Jack Campin  *  Computing Science Department, Glasgow University, 17 Lilybank
Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QQ, SCOTLAND.    041 339 8855 x6045 wk  041 556 1878 ho
INTERNET: jack%cs.glasgow.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk  USENET: jack@glasgow.uucp
JANET: jack@uk.ac.glasgow.cs     PLINGnet: ...mcvax!ukc!cs.glasgow.ac.uk!jack