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From: shannon@sun.uucp (Bill Shannon)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: handling of moderated newsgroups in 2.11
Message-ID: <9732@sun.uucp>
Date: Sat, 29-Nov-86 15:44:59 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.9732
Posted: Sat Nov 29 15:44:59 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 29-Nov-86 21:03:53 EST
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 42

I just installed 2.11 and have found quite a change in the way
moderated newsgroups are handled.  In 2.10.3 inews would check
for mod.* newsgroups but otherwise let you post to any newsgroup.
We have several local moderated newsgroups that were not named
mod.*.  By putting a line in the LIBDIR/moderators file, postnews
would not let people post directly to these newsgroups but would
instead send mail to the "moderator".  In our case the moderator
is a mail alias that uses recnews to post the article.  (The mail
alias also sends the article to people who want to read this
"newsgroup" using mail.)

In 2.11, inews checks the last field in the active file to determine
if a newsgroup is moderated, and if so rejects direct postings
(unless the posting has been "approved").  postnews does no check for
moderated newsgroups.  It leaves everything up to inews, which converts
(unapproved) postings to moderated newsgroups into mail to the moderator.
It finds the moderator by looking for a "backbone" entry in LIBDIR/
mailpaths and converting the newsgroup name into a mail address by
changing the '.'s to '-'s.

The fist problem is that clearly we don't want mail to our local
moderated newsgroups to be sent to a backbone site, so our backbone
entry in mailpaths just says "%s".  However, this is not right either
because we don't have any mail aliases for the many local (and regional)
moderated newsgroups in our local aliases file.

The second problem is that we can't use recnews to post mail to our
moderated newsgroups without also allowing people to post to them
directly.

So, 2.11 wizards, what do I do?  How can I make it work like it worked
with 2.10.3?  My first thought is to hack the LIBDIR/moderators stuff
back into postnews and use it to get mail to local and regional moderated
newsgroups sent to the right place, while letting inews do the work using
mailpaths for net-wide moderated newsgroups.  Any thoughts on this?  Any
other suggestions?

					Bill Shannon


P.S.  Does someone have a script that will add the 'm' flag to all net-wide
moderated newsgroups in our active file?