Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!sobmips!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-sdd!ucsdhub!celit!billd
From: billd@fps.com (Bill Davids_on)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Methods for updating a feeds sys file
Message-ID: <3688@celit.fps.com>
Date: 14 Nov 89 21:53:14 GMT
References: <1989Nov13.145624.15454@monymsys.uucp> <1608@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Reply-To: billd@fps.com (Bill Davids_on)
Organization: FPS Computing Inc., San Diego CA
Lines: 34

In article <1608@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
>  Have you looked at running IHAVE protocol? Although it's intended for
>people who have multiple feeds, it works well in this case. He sends you
>an IHAVE for a lot of groups, you select what you want using your sys
>file and do SENDME for the stuff you want.

This doesn't make sense.  When Bnews sends an IHAVE message, it sends
a list of message id's.  The receiving system can't possibly know what
groups the articles are in.  Rick Adam's latest "IF" change (in patch 18)
could almost work for this except that it's not set up for IHAVE batches
but rather for regular batches meant to be used by a hacked nntpxmit/nntpd.
You could use it for IHAVE by putting this in your sys file (on the sending
system):
	foobar:distributions:IF:/usr/spool/batch/foobar.ihave
Even then, the receiving system would have to determine the group from
the path name which varies from system to system (making this a bit
more complex).  Even if you did that, you wouldn't know all the groups
to which the article may have been crossposted.

To do this with IHAVE/SENDME, you would need a new modifier for
the sys file that would tell inews to put group name information in
the IHAVE file.

I think I like the idea of a control message to change the sys file
better but I also think that the admin should be able to allow or
disallow it on a per-site/per-hierarchy basis (with a default of
nobody allowed).  This would avoid the problem of run-away control
messages that we are all so familiar with and help keep potentially
obnoxious downstream sites from taking more than you want to send.
As with other admin control messages, mail should be sent to the news
admin whenever one of these control messages go through (mail should
probably also be sent back to the requester).

--Bill Davids_on