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From: cdr@brahms.amd.com (Carl Rigney)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Okay, what CNews info do I need BEFORE I read the manuals
Summary: nothing, really - its pretty complete
Keywords: c news, beginner
Message-ID: <1990Aug26.075652.10662@amd.com>
Date: 26 Aug 90 07:56:52 GMT
References: <9008251535.AA15538@jade.berkeley.edu> <1990Aug25.225630.6645@zoo.toronto.edu>
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Organization: Advanced Micro Devices; Sunnyvale, CA
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In article <1990Aug25.225630.6645@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <9008251535.AA15538@jade.berkeley.edu> lwv27@CAS.BITNET writes:
>>From browsing the news.software.b and other related groups, I see references
>>to either needing to do things (like build the software as user of news, etc.)
>>or configure things which are perhaps not exactly obvious.
>
>Many sysadmins' experience is that if you follow the directions, it works.
>
>	"Managing UUCP and Usenet", by Tim O'Reilly and Grace Todino,
>	O'Reilly & Associates, 1989, ISBN 0-937175-48-X.

I recently sent C news to a beginning sysadmin who wanted to run it.
He says this book is very detailed on B news but rather vague in places
on C news (occassional handwaving) - its still worth getting for a C
News Admin, but its no substitute for reading the documenation that
comes with C news.  Let me echo Henry's remark that if you read the
instructions and follow them carefully, C news works just fine.  I'd
strongly recommend reading all the doc, man & notebook files as well,
and after installing it look through all the files in ~news to
understand what each one does.  It makes things ever so much easier later.

The second thing every C news admin should do is learn Perl, because it's
so useful for all sorts of random hackery and customization.  (Although
C news uses not a drop of Perl at the moment.)  B news admins should switch
to C news, then learn Perl.  A news admins should seek professional help. :-)

--
Carl Rigney
cdr@amd.com