Xref: utzoo news.software.b:3637 news.software.nntp:432
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.nntp
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: B/C News woes
Message-ID: <1989Nov23.192922.4202@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1989Nov17.162448.22026@relay.nswc.navy.mil> <1989Nov21.140935.1224@relay.nswc.navy.mil> <256A4010.5066@rpi.edu> <1989Nov22.075837.12240@utstat.uucp> <89Nov22.130142est.2899@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 89 19:29:22 GMT

In article <89Nov22.130142est.2899@neat.cs.toronto.edu> lamy@cs.toronto.edu (Jean-Francois Lamy) writes:
>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...

Actually, we think there are too many already, although we don't see any
easy way to cut down the numbers.  There is no limit to how finely some
people want to slice things; there comes a time when we simply have to
say "sorry, that's your problem, not ours".  Obviously, it's a judgement
call just when that time comes.  One rule of thumb we use is that if
people could grit their teeth and live with something under B News, they
can probably grit their teeth and live with it under C News.

Frankly, we don't see a good technical justification for the split between
NEWSCTL and NEWSARTS.  They are logically both part of the news database
on your system.  (There *is* a good reason for the NEWSCTL/NEWSBIN split,
since it is not uncommon to have binaries shared among several machines,
or possibly even different sets of binaries accessing the same database.)
However, there are compelling compatibility reasons for the split, i.e. we
don't want to fix all the newsreaders that know about "/usr/lib/news" and
"/usr/spool/news", and not all systems have symbolic links.

>$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.

This one is a big trickier.  The spool areas *aren't* logically part of
the database in any strict sense.  However, we didn't want to add yet
another variable without grave need, and the sort of space reserves needed
to handle fluctuating news flow are also reasonably apropos to the problem
of fluctuating spooled volume.  In the end we invoked the "it was good
enough for them under B News" rule and declined to increase the system's
complexity for it.
-- 
That's not a joke, that's      |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
NASA.  -Nick Szabo             | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu