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From: page@ulowell.UUCP (Bob Page)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: creating groups
Message-ID: <770@ulowell.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 18-Nov-86 12:26:19 EST
Article-I.D.: ulowell.770
Posted: Tue Nov 18 12:26:19 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Nov-86 09:25:22 EST
References: <13792@amdcad.UUCP>
Reply-To: page@ulowell.UUCP (Bob Page)
Organization: University of Lowell
Lines: 26

phil@amdcad.UUCP (Phil Ngai) wrote in article <13792@amdcad.UUCP>:
>I create groups by editing the active file. I think the documentation
>suggests using inews -C.

I used to do the same, but would always forget to chown the file back
to news (I would edit it as root).  A few hours later inews would
have sent me 400 mail messages saying that there was a problem with
the active file, and drop the news on the floor.

I noticed under 2.11 when I did an ``inews -C ul.foo'', it expanded to:
	inews -c newgroup ul.foo -d ulctl [...etc]
which is really what I wanted to do anyway (ulctl is our distribution
code for UL-specific control messages).  If you don't want to send
to all your sites, use a ``local'' distribution.

>Is there any reason for telling people to use
>inews when editing the active file is about the same amount of work
>and less likely to send out unnecessary msgs?

Using inews allows you to forget the news directory layout, edits the
active file, creates the spool directory and runs as the right user,
so you don't have to remember to chown things when done editing.

..Bob
-- 
Bob Page,  U of Lowell CS Dept.      ulowell!page,  page@ulowell.CSNET