Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!batcomputer!rpi!tale
From: tale@pawl.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Limiting startup newsgroups?
Message-ID: <1989Nov15.061620.14478@rpi.edu>
Date: 15 Nov 89 06:16:20 GMT
References: <9563@pyr.gatech.EDU>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY
Lines: 38

In <9563@pyr.gatech.EDU> david@pyr.gatech.EDU (David Brown) writes:
DB> Help!  I'm trying to set up news on my machine.  Whenever a new user
DB> runs rn, he is given an exhaustive list of newsgroups (most of which
DB> we don't even carry) to subscribe to.

Are they in your active file?  rn uses a Bourne shell script named
"newsetup" which gets its information from there.  It doesn't know
about C News and "x" or "=" flags in the fourth field, though, so that
might be the source of your trouble if you are running C News and have
virtuallyu everything "x"ed out.

DB> Now, I don't think this is the way it's supposed to work.
DB> Shouldn't the user be prompted to subscribe only to those groups
DB> which are carried on my machine?  If so, how do I configure
DB> things?

You can edit newsetup or completely replace it with some home-brewed
version that accomplishes the same thing -- something that creates an
initial .newsrc for new users.

DB> The appropriate page# and name of the document would be a
DB> great help.

man newsetup(1) and the script itself, probably in the same directory
as the rn binary.

DB> Another, related question: Even though we don't subscribe to the
DB> newsgroup comp.unix.xenix, will my users be able to post to it?

Not directly; they might be able to forward it to some gateway site
that will do mail-to-news handling for comp.unix.xenix, or send it to
some kind soul at another site who doesn't mind posting an occasional
article for them.  If the group isn't subscribed in your active file,
though, inews will reject it.

Dave
-- 
 (setq mail '("tale@pawl.rpi.edu" "tale@ai.mit.edu" "tale@rpitsmts.bitnet"))