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Path: utzoo!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!neat.cs.toronto.edu!lamy
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.nntp
From: lamy@cs.toronto.edu (Jean-Francois Lamy)
Subject: Re: B/C News woes
Message-ID: <89Nov22.130142est.2899@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
References: <1989Nov17.162448.22026@relay.nswc.navy.mil> <1989Nov21.140935.1224@relay.nswc.navy.mil> <256A4010.5066@rpi.edu> <1989Nov22.075837.12240@utstat.uucp>
Date: 22 Nov 89 18:02:21 GMT

geoff@utstat.uucp (Geoff Collyer) writes:
>If you are running an up-to-date C news (Nov 13, though the relevant
>fix was earlier), you always get an error message in $NEWSCTL/errlog
                                     ^^^^^            ^^^^^^^^

Boy, don't I wish there was a supported way to get the logs in the standard
place where logs go instead of the control data area...  I (nai"vely) think
there should be wide agreement for two more magic variables (based on the fact
that those are the only two I've seen mentioned with any regularity, in fact I
don't remember anyone asking for any other, though I'm sure Henry and Geoff
have).

$NEWSLOG	where to put the logs
$NEWSPOOL	where to put the incoming/outgoing news spool.  I don't think
		that the spool area belongs logically with article storage,
		histo(e?)rical reasons notwithstanding.

Both of these items seem to be logically distinct part of news processing
from control data (NEWSCTL), and from article *storage* (NEWARTS).  But
whereas handling NEWSSPOOL as a separate area is easy because you can just
make two symlinks and forget about it, getting logs to go somewhere standard
requires fiddling with the source and is therefore messier.

Yah, I even know what the answer is going to be :-(  Maybe I should start a
petition?
	
Jean-Francois Lamy               lamy@ai.utoronto.ca, uunet!ai.utoronto.ca!lamy
AI Group, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4