Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Okay, what CNews info do I need BEFORE I read the manuals
Message-ID: <1990Aug27.161208.15695@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <9008251535.AA15538@jade.berkeley.edu> <1990Aug25.225630.6645@zoo.toronto.edu> <1990Aug26.075652.10662@amd.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 90 16:12:08 GMT

In article <1990Aug26.075652.10662@amd.com> cdr@brahms.amd.com (Carl Rigney) writes:
>>	"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 ...

Yes, it is basically a B News book lightly revised to cover C News as well.
It does do a reasonable job on the common underlying concepts, which I'm
inclined to think are more often the trouble spots.

There are schemes afoot for from-scratch novice-oriented C News docs, but
don't expect immediate miracles.

>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.)  ...

We're likely to continue avoiding Perl, actually.  We've never really gotten
into it -- we tend to prefer awk+sh for random hackery -- and many systems
do not have it.
-- 
Committees do harm merely by existing. | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                       -Freeman Dyson  |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry