Newsgroups: news.software.b Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Cnews - server don't work so good Message-ID: <1989Nov15.203509.6405@utzoo.uucp> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References: Date: Wed, 15 Nov 89 20:35:09 GMT In article gnb@bby.oz (Gregory N. Bond) writes: >1) The newsrun script assumes that the login shell for news is > /bin/sh, as the non-server machines run a command like > rsh $server "PATH=$PATH relaynews -n -r" < article > When news uses csh then this rsh command fails , silently... Frankly, we consider this a botch in rsh. If we wanted the C Shell [he says, suppressing the great temptation to expand "C" into some suitable adjective], we'd have said "rcsh". Yet another case of misguided attempts at "user friendliness" resulting in programmer-hostile software. Fixed in next patch. >2) THIS IS A FATAL bug: rnews is run on the client, and it calls > spacefor to see if in.coming has enough room for a batch. If you do > a spacefor on a client, then that is converted into an rsh to the > server. Unfortunatly, the rsh command then gobbles the (first part > of) the input article batch as it is NOT run with the -n flag. Now this is a *BUG* in rsh. Period. It's simply not acting the way a Unix command is supposed to. Yes, I realize it's difficult to fix, but if I wanted an operating system that a 14-year-old could write, I'd run MSDOS. :-) Programmers should not be forced to constantly work around bugs like this. Sigh. Fixed in next patch. -- A bit of tolerance is worth a | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology megabyte of flaming. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu