Newsgroups: pubnet.sysops,can.usrgroup
Path: utzoo!lsuc!maccs!dan
From: dan@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Dan Trottier)
Subject: Re: changing USENET to suit one's system
Message-ID: <256813B2.2190@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca>
Reply-To: dan@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Dan Trottier)
Organization: McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario
References: <1989Nov14.041714.4650@telly.on.ca> <1989Nov15.172022.511@utzoo.uucp>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 89 15:09:38 GMT

This should probably have been mailed to evan@telly but I think the
discussion which might follow from posting this would be interesting
and enlightning.

In article <1989Nov15.172022.511@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <1989Nov14.041714.4650@telly.on.ca> evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes:
>>Does the Usenet software currently in use allow me to re-arrange the
>>hierarchies *only for the purposes of reading on this site*, without
>>scrambling it all up for my feeds (both upstream and downstream).
>
>No, you'd have to bash on the news readers a fair bit, I would think.
>If you aren't concerned about outbound news, you can use C News's "="
>feature to remap groups locally, but that mapping is one-way and will
>be visible to anyone you feed.

Create a parallel news spool directory (ex /usr/spool/spoof) and make
links into /usr/spool/news using whatever names you like. Create a
second active file (ex active.spoof) with the new names from spool/spoof.
You might actually be able to use upact from Cnews to scan the parallel
directory and keep active.spoof up to date.

Recompile rn to read from /usr/spool/spoof and use active.spoof when 
necessary. This should work ok if you aren't concerned about having 
the Newsgroups: line in article headers match the name of the spoofed
group. I haven't tried this but I can't see why it wouldn't work.

Things to watch out for:

     - Posting news
          - does rn grab the newsgroup name from the Newsgroup: header
          - Pnews hier.spoofed.group should post to real.group.name
               - should be straight forward to change Pnews so it
                 gets the proper name. Just check the link.

     - Cross references
          - this won't work. should be pretty obvious why.

     - Saving articles
          - Rn will create names based on normal newsgroup names and
            not your spoofed names (I think).

I've probably missed a few things here. The nice thing is that you can
try this scheme out without changing anything for your regular users. If
after a few weeks everything works ok then you can announce the new format
to your users.

Advantages:

     - You don't have to run two versions of Cnews and keep two copies
       of news articles.

     - Your newsgroup re-organization would be invisible to the outside
       world.

     - You are not making any major changes to either the news transport
       or interface layers. This should make support easier.

-- 
Dan Trottier                                       dan@maccs.dcss.McMaster.CA
Dept of Computer Science                       ...!uunet!utai!utgpu!maccs!dan
McMaster University                                      (416) 525-9140 x3444