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From: dce@mips.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Sharing news across NFS
Message-ID: <185@quacky.mips.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 22-Feb-87 00:30:25 EST
Article-I.D.: quacky.185
Posted: Sun Feb 22 00:30:25 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Feb-87 15:49:38 EST
Reply-To: dce@quacky.UUCP (David Elliott)
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 34

In an effort to test NFS, widen news availability, and save some disk space
(our Super-Eagles are dying), I have set up some of our local machines
to share news across NFS.

I have implemented this as follows:

	1. /usr/spool/news is shared
	2. /usr/new/lib/news is shared, but seq and sys are symbolic
	   links to files in /usr/new/lib/news.local
	3. Only the machine that has the news disks actually gets
	   news from outside.

I originally tried to put all files to be shared in a directory called
usr/spool/news/shared, but the news software likes to unlink and rename
files, which doesn't work with symbolic links.

Anyway, I have a system that now works except for one thing that bothers
me: postings made on a sharing machine update /usr/spool/news and
/usr/new/lib/news/active. Since I use HIDDENNET, I can't set it up so
that the main feed just doesn't forward the news.

Is there any way for me to change it so that inews doesn't update the
active file? That is, without changing all of the various news posting
commands, can I tell inews to just send the news to rnews@mips without
saving a local copy?

It's not that bad currently; the news just gets refused when it gets
sent to the NFS base machine, and it does mean that new articles
are available on all of the sharing machines as soon as they are
posted. It just seems like a mess.
-- 
			David Elliott

UUCP: 	{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!decwrl!mips!dce, DDD:  	408-720-1700