Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!fdls!dougw
From: dougw@fdls.UUCP (dougw)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: Updating Active file
Keywords: Active newsgroups
Message-ID: <180@fdls.UUCP>
Date: 13 Feb 90 23:37:34 GMT
References: <196@jgaltstl.UUCP>
Reply-To: dougw@fdls.UUCP (Doug Walker)
Distribution: na
Organization: Oregon Department Of Agriculture, Salem, OR
Lines: 50

In article <196@jgaltstl.UUCP> terry@jgaltstl.UUCP (terry linhardt) writes:
>I downloaded a copy of the 'newsgroups' file from my feed (uunet),
>and have found any number of groups which were not in my active file.
>Many of these I don't subscribe to. However, there are a number in,
>for instance, comp, which are valid newsgroups, but my machine does
>not recognize them as being valid. Therefore, they are discarded into
>'junk'. What is the correct procedure for getting my 'active' file
>to be in-step with my feed's newsgroups file. 

I am also a newer uunet subscriber and had the same problem.  What you will
need to do is to follow the procedure on pages 192 through 193 of the Managing
uucp and Usenet Nutshell handbook that you received from uunet to manually add
the news groups to your active file.  Assuming your news library directory is
/usr/lib/news and you wanted to add newsgroup gnu.announceStatus, the command
would be:

	/usr/lib/news/inews -C gnu.announceStatus </dev/null

In these pages, you will also find similar commands to remove newsgroups,
change their moderated status, etc.  Anyway, once you add the newsgroup to
your active file, you will find that "all is well".

The active file that was created when you installed your news software was the
"standard" world wide usenet newsgroup distribution list.  uunet carries quite
a few additional newsgroups as you found by downloading their current
newsgroup file.

I was futher confused by the fact that when I installed my news software I
selected that an automatic update of my active file should take place.  But,
it never did.  uunet recently cleared this up for me by the following answer I
received from email sent to uunet|postmaster:

    "there are no automatic postings of checkgroup messages any longer.
    too many people complained.  you will have to read the various news.*
    groups to find the posted input to checkgroups and run the
    checkgroups at your end yourself."
    
I have no idea what the complaints were.  I have subscribed again to
news.groups (hope this is the correct one) and will make any changes manually
as desired.

Hope this helps.  Send me email if you have additional questions.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Doug Walker                                 uunet!fdls!dougw
Oregon Department of Agriculture            (503) 378-3790
Food and Dairy Division
635 Capitol Street NE
Salem, OR  97310-0110