Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!decwrl!eda.com!jim
From: jim@eda.com (Jim Budler)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: How can I remain calm?
Message-ID: <1989Oct11.235430.9923@eda.com>
Date: 11 Oct 89 23:54:30 GMT
References: <1989Oct11.211031.10051@ee.rochester.edu>
Organization: EDA Systems,Inc. Santa Clara, CA
Lines: 43

deke@ee.rochester.edu (Dikran Kassabian) writes:


} Under what circumstances can my sys file get requested by and sent to others?
} For what purpose?

}       ^Deke Kassabian,   deke@ee.rochester.edu   or   ur-valhalla!deke
}    Univ of Rochester, Dept of EE, Rochester, NY 14627     (+1 716-275-3106)

Under most any circumstances. A person posts a sendsys control message.

For what purpose? Usually to check out neighbors sys files to verify
your connection. Usually gets out further than that though. The poor sucker
who does it improperly gets *lots* of mail.

Nothing to worry about, unless you really truly don't want people to
know about your news connections for some reason.

However, given that you are running cnews, if you chose to be paranoid
about it, you can edit the script /usr/lib/newsbin/ctl/sendsys like so:

*** /tmp/,RCSt1a09865   Wed Oct 11 16:47:42 1989
--- sendsys     Wed Oct 11 16:47:31 1989
***************
*** 9,16 ****

  SENDER="`newsreply`"
  (echo "Subject: response from `newshostname` to your sendsys"; echo "";
! case "$1" in
! "")   cat $NEWSCTL/sys ;;
! *)    awk -f $NEWSBIN/relay/canonsys.awk $NEWSCTL/sys | egrep "^$1:" ;;
! esac ) | mail "$SENDER"
! echo "$NEWSCTL/sys file has been sent to $SENDER.  Remain calm." | mail $NEWSMASTER
--- 9,13 ----

  SENDER="`newsreply`"
  (echo "Subject: response from `newshostname` to your sendsys"; echo "";
!  echo "Sorry. We don't do sendsys.") | mail "$SENDER"
! echo "$NEWSCTL/sys file has been requested by $SENDER.  Remain calm." | mail $NEWSMASTER
-- 
Jim Budler	jim@eda.com    ...!{decwrl,uunet}!eda!jim
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