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From: rob@philabs.Philips.Com (Rob Robertson)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Administering a News system part time
Message-ID: <1894@briar.Philips.Com>
Date: Fri, 23-Oct-87 15:44:22 EST
Article-I.D.: briar.1894
Posted: Fri Oct 23 15:44:22 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 26-Oct-87 01:53:18 EST
References: <273@arnold.UUCP> <7540@e.ms.uky.edu> <560@nitrex.UUCP>
Reply-To: rob@briar.philips.com (Rob Robertson)
Organization: Philips Laboratories, Briarcliff Manor, NY
Lines: 47
Keywords: not much time

In article <273@arnold.UUCP> dave@arnold.UUCP (Dave Arnold) writes:
>Like I said, the hardware will be a Convergent Technologies Megaframe running
>CTIX, with about 80meg of disk space (probably 20-40meg free), and a 1200 baud
>modem, a telebit trailblazer looks good for the future.  There are about 100
>employee's who will be potential News readers/posters, most of them
>programmers.

it don't take that much time.  5 hours a week tops.  i manage news
here at philabs.  3 separate machines, with a user community of about
200.  if you've got everything automated and know what you're doing
(AND HAVE GOOD HARDWARE AND MODEMS), it's cake.  

20-40 meg of disk ain't bad for a leaf site if its all reserved for
transient news (ie it's in the spool directory, not the stuff the
users have saved).

we've got about 120 meg on our spool partition.  we feed 14 sites,
plus zillions of mail connections (the mail directory is
/usr/spool/mail on bsd), and expire news after 14 days.  we rarely
break 60% capacity.

things that add to your time: 

	an unreliable news feed.  if the machine feeding you goes down 
	for a week expect to swallow 3 weeks of news two weeks after
	it comes up.

	feeding unreliable sites.  at philabs that's one of the
	reasons we don't connect to home computers.  if a disk goes
	out on a pc, it can be weeks before it's fixed.  if it's a
	production machine (with the possible exception of the the
	world's largest computer company) it's up within days.

the point being if you automate most of it with script, have good hard
and software, and have a good news feed, you shouldn't have to spend
much time at it.

users are a different question.....

good luck,

rob
-- 
				william robertson
				rob@philabs.philips.com
		
				"better living through shell scripts"