Xref: utzoo ont.uucp:344 tor.news:108
Newsgroups: ont.uucp,tor.news
Path: utzoo!utstat!geoff
From: geoff@utstat.uucp (Geoff Collyer)
Subject: putting up C alpha news
Message-ID: <1988Jan6.142625.5695@utstat.uucp>
Summary: it may not be easy, but it may be essential
Organization: Statistics, U. of Toronto
References: <1988Jan5.011219.2676@utstat.uucp> <1988Jan6.000342.19591@lsuc.uucp>
Distribution: ont
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 88 14:26:25 EST

> So, despite Henry being a co-author of C news and utzoo being a
> machine that really needed help, he wasn't even running it?

Henry is the junior author of C News (that's why his name is second on
the Usenix paper).  He wrote expire, the batcher, the input subsystem
and a few library functions; I wrote the rest: inews, rnews, relaynews,
newshist, gngp, and the support libraries.

utzoo had been running all of C news but C rnews for some time. I don't
know the reasons for Henry continuing to run the B rnews, but I can
guess at them: utzoo is a backbone site and it's prudent not to disturb
the news or uucp transport software without good reason, and until the
backlog appeared, there wasn't a compelling reason to switch, given that
utzoo doesn't process news during the day.

> Maybe that explains why C news was so much "fun" to install.

Well, we did warn that it might require work.  To quote the top-level
README.FIRST file of the alpha release:

   This IS NOT the definitive release.  As the word "alpha" implies, it
   is not even beta test.  This release is NOT nicely packaged, it is NOT
   bug-free, it does NOT have the full desired functionality (for example,
   it doesn't have moderated-group security yet), it undoubtedly has some
   portability and compatibility problems, it is not properly documented,
   and it WILL be superseded by a later version in a conversion that is
   NOT guaranteed to be painless.  In other words, use at your own risk.
   It is essentially our current working version.

   If you don't have time to explore its idiosyncrasies and babysit its
   problems, you should not even try to put it up.

With that warning in mind, I continue to advise any VAX-750-class site
with a system programmer, getting a full news feed, and not processing
news during the day (utzoo fits that description, and I think dciem
does, for example) to switch to C news, *out of necessity*, not for my
ego gratification.  If the people running such a site wait a little
longer, they won't have much choice.  Consider my suggestion to be a bit
of friendly advice to those about to be overrun by news.  The sooner
they switch, the more time they will have to install C news, without
a growing backlog of unprocessed news filling their disks.

If you pay attention to the alpha release README files and the C News
Bulletins published in news.software.b (there have been six so far), you
will have less trouble installing C alpha news than Chris Lewis did,
partly because we hadn't published all the Bulletins when he installed C
news on lsuc, and partly because Chris was rushed and didn't read all
the READMEs first (or so he said).  I would also remind people that
it is easier to build a test C news system than it is a to build a test
B news system, and I encourage people to run B news and C news in
parallel until they feel confident of C news.

Incidentally, we do appreciate Chris's feedback and the beta release
should be both more robust and easier to install.  (No, I don't know
when that will be, but we hope to have something to announce at February
Usenix.)
-- 
Geoff Collyer	utzoo!utstat!geoff, utstat.toronto.{edu,cdn}!geoff