Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!umd5!mimsy!oddjob!gargoyle!att!chinet!mcdchg!clyde!watmath!julian!uwovax!reggers
From: reggers@uwovax.uwo.ca (Reg Quinton)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: VMS <-> Usenet
Message-ID: <511@uwovax.uwo.ca>
Date: 21 Jul 88 16:10:04 GMT
References: <421@dragos.UUCP>
Lines: 47
Organisation: University of Western Ontario, Canada

We've got ANU news too and have been moving mail between Unix machines
and VMS for quite a while. Our experiences are by no means complete but,
for what it's worth, here goes.

In article <421@dragos.UUCP>, work@dragos.UUCP (Dragos Ruiu) writes:
> 
>   Well, we finally got a copy of News for VMS from ANU. It looks like
> a really nice package, unfortunately there are no mechanisms for transfering
> news other than NNTP. The software will unbatch Unix news batches, but it
> makes no provisions for transfering those news batches to the VMS site.
> 
>   In the documentation there are mentions of systems that have mail links
> to pure Unix sites. Is there any software that does this VMS MAIL <-> UUCP
> communication. Does anyone out there have any software that will
> automatically transfer news batches from a pure Unix system to a VMS site ?

Well, if you've got a mail link going you've got the problem licked.

	a) You can use the CMU/TEK IP package. (That transfers mail over
	   the ether/ip/tcp/smtp net; we use this but have our own implement-
	   ation of smtp and mail).... There are commercial IP products too.
	b) You can use Ultrix/VMS links. (That uses decnet/mail11 but I'd
	   push you towards IP compatiblity).
	c) You could use PMDF (on VMS) and talk MMDF (I known nothing about
	   this one).
	d) This is a bit bizarre but you could try urep (on Unix) into
	   JNET (on VMS).
	e) Getting USENET news via BITNET works well for us.

>   Has anyone ever tried to do this using a kermit server as the transport
> mechanism ?

We've been moving mail between Unix and VMS for several years now using this
strategy. We've got something called MLNET for Unix (BSD) that's a script
follower with embedded kermit protocols. MLNET talks to all sorts of systems
around here over dial-up; local switches; and hard links.

We have been delivering mail into VMS/MAIL (using a GATEWAY!address) syntax (but
I no longer support that one) for about 4 years now.  Over the last year (or so)
we've developed a replacement mail system for VAX/VMS which is RFC821/22
compliant and we move mail using ether/ip/tcp/smtp to our own daemon; also it
implements BSMTP (for JNET); and BSMTP (for MLNET).

>   Is there anything that will let me pick up news on VMS over a LD phone
> link ? The ability to post or do mail is not very important, but I'd really
> like to receive news on the VMS system....

sorry, don't know about this one.