Xref: utzoo news.admin:7194 news.software.b:3184
Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!texbell!vector!attctc!kcdev!Taliesin!Mark
From: Mark@Taliesin.UUCP (Mark Wickersham)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b
Subject: Re: Need HELP!!! with inews/postnews... news dirs.
Summary: check permissions in your news directory..
Keywords: inews, postnews, news directories AREN'T being created!
Message-ID: <271@Taliesin.UUCP>
Date: 12 Oct 89 04:07:27 GMT
References: <454@hades.OZ>
Organization: University of Kansas Society for Fantasy and Science Fiction
Lines: 37

In article <454@hades.OZ>, greyham@hades.OZ (Greyham Stoney) writes:
> I've recently landed the job of news administrator at our site, and NEED
> HELP with inews's weirdness!. For some reason, newsgroup directories are NOT
> being created when articles for new newsgroups arrive, or are posted from our
> site. 
   
  Welcome to the net.  Repeat after me.. C is portable C is portable (oh! $%#$
  my grandma's BASIC is more portable...)

> inews: Link into /usr/spool/news/comp/sw/components/1 failed (No such file or directory); check dir permissions.

  You should listen to your inews.. It's talking to you..  

Your file creation mask was probably set up so that when your system was made
you don't have rw all permission on /usr/spool/news.. and when you create
the directory (for example) /usr/spool/news/comp/sw/components by hand, 
you continue to perpetuate the wrong permissions.  You can kludge around this
if security isn't a problem by marking all news directories as rw, but
that isn't ideal (or even very workable).  Ideally, when your news was set
up, user and group id's were established for administration of news.  On
my system, the user and group are known (imaginatively enough) as news news.
All news spool and article directorys, as well as all history files should
have these as owner and group.  That way, it all works..  

I would strongly consider going through your bnews kit and setting up your
localize script, defs.h file, and any horrible nasty patches to you Makefile
that localize should've got but didn't.. (C is portable C is portable OOMMMM!)
and try remaking your system.

PS.. back the old stuff up unless you can live with down time.

PPS.. don't forget that if you change stuff in bnews, your rn etc. may need
attention.

Mark Wickersham 
Sorry about posting this, but I doubt my email stood a prayer..