Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!njin!uupsi!cmcl2!panix!alexis
From: alexis@panix.uucp (Alexis Rosen)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Problems with expire in CNews
Message-ID: <1991Apr27.082547.14211@panix.uucp>
Date: 27 Apr 91 08:25:47 GMT
References: <1991Apr24.180649.14798@zoo.toronto.edu> <1991Apr25.001832.19898@s1.msi.umn.edu> <1991Apr25.161229.18843@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Organization: PANIX - Public Access Unix Systems of NY
Lines: 52

schwager@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Michael Schwager) writes:
>Indeed, if I may make a comment regarding News (we ran notes up until
>December of last year):
>
>Seems like there are all kinds of pitfalls, troubles, and caveats one can
>enter when bringing News up. [...]
>[...]  News is so big and cantankerous, that it's so dang
>confusing to figure out problems.  It's taken me a few months to get it [...]
>
>In a nutshell: News is big, bad, and ugly.  I would not wish upon my worst
>enemy that they be forced to bring it up from scratch.

I'd have to disagree with this. When I brought up Cnews, I had never done
any sort of news administration. I had *no* experience writing in C under
Unix (though I had a reading knowledge of C left over from earlier days)
and in fact still haven't had much time to learn about it. I had not much
experience with administering Unix in general, and was working with a fairly
oddball system (A/UX, getting less odd all the time...) which nobody could
offer much help with. That was over a year ago. 

It took me about a day to _thoroughly_ read all the docs and stuff, and to
figure out what the appropriate answers were to the various questions that
the Cnews config script asks you. I made careful notes that day about what
each file in Cnews was and where it went.

The next day I brought up Cnews. Took most of the day to get it to work- I
had to figure out a few missing headers, and that sort of thing. Then I
spent five minutes writing up the explist, sys, batchparams, and so on, and
that was it. Done. Since then it's run for over a year without a single
problem.

I don't attribute this to any particular brilliance on my part. It comes
from knowing that, even though it's running on a Mac, it's not Mac software.
:-)  Seriously, you can't just browse the docs for a few minutes and hope
things will work out, because they won't.

Especially given the unix-variant-independance of Cnews Henry and Geoff have
done a remarkable job of uniformly superb quality. Sure it's big, but it
has an awful lot to do. As for the bad and the ugly, I'd have to lay that
at the door of sysops who don't read documentation and (at least as frequently)
weird variants of Unix that barely live up to their name.

The best thing you can do if you want to bring up Cnews from scratch is forget
what you think you know and learn it right, the first time. Do that and you'll
be very happy with the results. Cnews is at least as good as my professional
work (and it's free!)... Those who know what an egotist I am will know what
high praise that is. :-)

---
Alexis Rosen
Owner/Sysadmin, PANIX Public Access Unix, NY
{cmcl2,apple}!panix!alexis