Path: news1.ucsd.edu!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!agate!spool.mu.edu!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!noc.netcom.net!news3.noc.netcom.net!news.consultix.com!news.kei.com!hookup!wariat.org!ict.pwr.wroc.pl!cyber.ict.pwr.wroc.pl!cyber.ict.pwr.wroc.pl!not-for-mail From: tsurmacz@ict.pwr.wroc.pl (Tomasz Surmacz) Newsgroups: pl.news.admin,pl.answers,soc.culture.polish,news.admin.hierarchies,soc.answers,news.answers Subject: How to add pl.* hierarchy to a news server (FAQ) Supersedes: Followup-To: poster Date: 2 Nov 1995 01:15:10 -0000 Organization: Technical University of Wroclaw, Poland Lines: 287 Sender: tsurmacz@cyber.ict.pwr.wroc.pl Approved: rzm@mat.uni.torun.pl,news-answers-request@MIT.Edu Distribution: world Expires: Thu, 07 Dec 95 01:15:04 GMT Message-ID: Reply-To: tsurmacz@asic.ict.pwr.wroc.pl (Tomasz Surmacz) NNTP-Posting-Host: cyber.ict.pwr.wroc.pl Keywords: faq news pl hierarchy pl-hierarchy new site innd cnews poland polish X-Archive: ftp://ftp.ict.pwr.wroc.pl/pub/faq-pl/news-pl-new-site-faq.1 and http://www.ict.pwr.wroc.pl/doc/news-pl-new-site-faq.html X-Posting-Frequency: Posted monthly, on 2nd day of the month. X-Copyright: (c) 1994,1995 Tomasz Surmacz. The following text may be copied in verbatim form (in whole or partial) for *private* (ie. non-commecial) use, transported via news, e-mail, stored on a WWW or ftp server, etc. Xref: news1.ucsd.edu pl.news.admin:1 pl.answers:2 soc.culture.polish:33860 news.admin.hierarchies:572 soc.answers:3131 news.answers:48450 Posted-By: auto-faq 3.1.1.2 Archive-name: usenet/pl-news-hierarchy How to add pl.* hierarchy to a news server This document contains the most important things related to adding the pl.* news hierarchy to a news server or just configuring the server to carry it properly if pl.* groups are already there. It is intended mainly for news system administrators (and Polish users abroad trying to convince their news administrators to get "pl.*" groups). This is a detailed step-by-step instruction but if it seems too elementary for you - look at the end for a quick checklist (Use your favourite key sequence to find '====='). If you are a news administrator at some site and somebody has asked you to participate in distribution of pl.* groups, then read on. If you are a news user, who wants to read the pl.* groups on his default news server - you should find the news administrator, kindly ask him if he could arrange receiving the pl.* newsgroups and send him this article (or the pointer to the HTML version at http://www.ict.pwr.wroc.pl/doc/news-pl-new-site-faq.html), to make his job easier. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are few things to do, if you are going to receive the pl.* news hierarchy, but the most important ones are: * getting the pl.* groups sent to you, * sending pl.* groups back (so that your users can POST), * configuring the hierarchy for the automatic creation of new groups. * appropriate handling of postings to moderated groups. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Getting the articles. Contact the news administrator at the news server already carrying pl.* groups. Try to find the nearest one. The best of course is when pl.* groups are carried over your 'normal' feed - ie. together with other news hierarchies. But as the pl.* news are quite young (first groups were created about June 1994), there are not many news servers outside of Poland having them, so you may have to create a special new feed for them. Below is the list of some servers outside Poland (and some in Poland) carrying pl.*, that I know of. It is not very long (nor complete) as you see. If the contact address is not explicitly listed, try 'usenet' at the news server's address, as 'usenet@news.ict.pwr.wroc.pl'. USA/Cleveland news.wariat.org zbig@wariat.org (Zbigniew J. Tyrlik) USA/Connecticut news.miracle.net jacek@miracle.net (Jacek A. Ponarski) [new!] USA uunet.uu.net [new!] USA gail.ripco.com USA news.mcs.com USA ratty.wolfe.net USA news.sprintlink.net USA news.uoregon.edu newsadmin@news.uoregon.edu and many more Sweden sunet.se (existing feeds only!) Germany news.uni-stuttgart.de news@news.uni-stuttgart.de (Kurt Jaeger) Australia news.ozemail.com.au Poland news.ict.pwr.wroc.pl tsurmacz@ict.pwr.wroc.pl (Tomasz Surmacz) Poland news.fuw.edu.pl michalj@fuw.edu.pl (Michal Jankowski) Poland news.mimuw.edu.pl usenet@news.mimuw.edu.pl and all existing news servers in Poland (check http://www.ict.pwr.wroc.pl/pzs/pzs_nntp.html for the complete list) Send e-mail to any of the above news administrators, asking him to feed you pl.* hierarchy. Include your news server addresses: the internet address of the server and its 'news name' ie. the string which is put in the 'Path:' header. Unfortunately, sunet.se seems to be overloaded with its newsfeeds, so its administrators will not give you a 'new feed', but if you already have one - just ask for the pl.* hierarchy to be added to your existing feed. Otherwise, contact other people from this list. In reply you should get appropriate host name/news name for the host you will be receiving pl.* articles from. (The first will be exactly as in the list above (let it be "sample.site.pl", but the 'Path:' address is usually a bit different - say "news.pl".) You should also get the current list of all pl.* groups that you ought to create manually. This list is also posted regularly to pl.answers and pl.news.admin groups (you may connect to news.ict.pwr.wroc.pl to get access to these groups before you establish the proper feed for pl.* for yourself). You can get the part of newsgroups and active file also via ftp, as stated below. Add the internet address (sample.site.pl) to your hosts.nntp file and restart the server or do a "ctlinnd reload hosts.nntp '' ", if you are running INND. This way you start recognizing the other host as the news server and not a client. The 'PathHost' ("news.pl" in our example) will be needed for the second step - sending news back. Now - create all the groups. You should get the list in the format of the active file, so this little script should do the job: --------------------------- add_pl.sh ------------------------------ #!/bin/sh # Usage: add_pl file_containing_pl_groups_in_active_format # such as ftp://ftp.ict.pwr.wroc.pl/pub/faq-pl/pl.active # change this to reflect your configuration ACTIVE=/usr/lib/news/active PATH=$PATH:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/lib/news/bin # Pause the server (assuming innd) ctlinnd pause 'updating active' cp ${ACTIVE} ${ACTIVE}.bak awk '{ printf ("%s 0000000000 0000000001 %s\n", $1, $4); }' < $1 >> $(ACTIVE) ctlinnd reload active 'updating active' ctlinnd go 'updating active' ---------------------------------------------------------------------- or if there are not too many groups, then (for INND only): --------------------------- add_pl_small.sh -------------------------- #!/bin/sh # Usage: add_pl_small file_containing_pl_groups_in_active_format # such as ftp://ftp.ict.pwr.wroc.pl/pub/faq-pl/pl.active # change this to reflect your configuration PATH=$PATH:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/news/bin while read group first last type ; do ctlinnd newgroup ${group} ${type} done < $1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You should also get the descriptions of all the pl.* groups so just 'cat >>' them to the end of your 'newsgroups' file. The always-up-to-date list of all pl.* groups (ie. not more than 24 hours behind) can be downloaded via ftp from the following address: ftp://ftp.ict.pwr.wroc.pl/pub/faq-pl/pl.newsgroups The portion of current 'active' file containing only pl.* groups can be found at: ftp://ftp.ict.pwr.wroc.pl/pub/faq-pl/pl.active ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- moderators file: All the postings to the moderated groups under pl.* should be sent to news-group-name@usenet.pl (with dots in the group name replaced by hyphens) - so to your 'moderators' file add the following somewhere near the beginning: [new!] pl.*:%s@usenet.pl Up until July 1995 the following address was the only official address for moderated postings in the pl.* hierarchy: pl.*:%s@moderators.fuw.edu.pl In August 1995 it has been obsoleted by the domain "usenet.pl" but it will still be supported (although not recommended) until end of June 1996, so that all the news administrators of servers carrying pl.* groups have enough time to switch to the new address. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- control.ctl file: To get all new pl.* groups created and removed automatically when needed, add the following to the control.ctl file: [new!] newgroup:michalj@*fuw.edu.pl:pl.*:doit=newgroup rmgroup:michalj@*fuw.edu.pl:pl.*:doit=rmgroup newgroup:newgroup@usenet.pl:pl.*:doit=newgroup rmgroup:newgroup@usenet.pl:pl.*:doit=rmgroup Please note, there is *NO* dot between the first star and 'fuw'. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- expire.ctl file: This is completely your (or your users) policy, how long to keep the postings in each group, but let me suggest you just one thing. There is a special group pl.answers which is much like all *.answers groups - it is moderated and all articles there are sent periodically with the appropriate 'Expires:' and 'Supersedes:' headers, so it would be best, if these were respected. If your 'standard' entry is like: '*:A:1:10:never' - ie. 'never' remove articles with 'Expires:' header before they expire - don't worry about pl.answers. But if you force all articles to be expired after say 10 days - please make an exception and add to the expire.ctl: pl.answers:A:1:10:never or: pl.answers:A:1:10:60 which means keep articles there for at least 1 day, usually 10 days if there is no 'Expires:' header, otherwise respect the header (but in the latter case - not longer than 60 days even if Expires: header says it should be kept longer). All the articles have maximum 30-40 days expiration period, so any of the above will be ok. (It is a good idea to respect these headers in other groups too, anyway). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Sending news: Unless you are receiving pl.* groups through your mainstream feed, you need to reconfigure a bit your server to send pl.* groups back. And even if you are receiving them through your normal feeds, please make sure they are included in the list of groups sent out. When you asked for a pl.* feed, you also got permission to send all pl.* groups back, so to your 'newsfeeds' file (that's in innd; in cnews it is called 'sys') file add appropriate entry for sending the pl.* groups back. Use the 'pathhost' name (in our example - "news.pl") you have got, to build the entry. For example, in innd (assuming getting news from sample.site.pl and sending them back there) it might look like: plnews/news.pl\ :!*,pl.*\ :Tf,Wnm: (replace "news.pl" with what appears in the Path: field put there by the site feeding you) and then you also need to tell your cron job sending news, to send them also to "sample.site.pl". If you are using nntpsend/innxmit, add to the nntpsend.ctl file: plnews:sample.site.pl:::-T1720 -t300 ^ ^ ^ | | + Other useful parameters | Internet addres of your pl.* provider +-- Name used in newsfeeds file. That should be all... You may now post a test message to pl.test and expect a reply in e-mail within a day or so, as there is an automatic pl.test responder attached to one of the servers in Poland. If your test posting reaches it - get yourself a beer, as you have done a good work. :-) If you do not want to get the reply message - just include the word 'ignore' in the message subject or body. ======================================================================= ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Once again, step by step, in short: You probably know your news system better than me, so these detailed descriptions may be unnecessary. If you know how to do most of things, use this short 'checklist' instead: * Contact the news administrator at the other end and get the feed for pl.* groups * Add all existing groups to the 'active' file * Add groups' descriptions to your 'newsgroups' file * Add these 4 lines to the control.ctl file: [new!] newgroup:michalj@*fuw.edu.pl:pl.*:doit=newgroup rmgroup:michalj@*fuw.edu.pl:pl.*:doit=rmgroup newgroup:newgroup@usenet.pl:pl.*:doit=newgroup rmgroup:newgroup@usenet.pl:pl.*:doit=rmgroup And please note, that there is no dot before 'fuw'! * Add this line to the 'moderators' file: [new!] pl.*:%s@usenet.pl * Check the expiration policy for all 'normal' groups, and if possible try respecting the 'Expires:' headers in pl.answers group by putting 'never' or '60' in the last field of entry in expire.ctl file. * Feed all the pl.* groups back, so the articles posted by your users will be transferred to other servers. * Send a test posting to pl.test and check whether you receive a reply by e-mail. * Send a short message to tsurmacz@news.ict.pwr.wroc.pl saying you have added pl.* to your news server, so I can keep the list of servers up to date (as long as it does not grow beyond a resonable size) and keep track of how far pl.* groups are propagated. * If your usenet neighbours want to get pl.* groups, send them this 'starter kit' or point them to the newest version. There should be a copy in pl.answers and pl.news.admin at *your* server soon, but if not, you may always get one from: ftp://ftp.ict.pwr.wroc.pl/pub/faq-pl/news-pl-new-site-faq.1 http://www.ict.pwr.wroc.pl/doc/news-pl-new-site-faq.html That's all. If you have any comments on the above procedure or my description, please do tell me, so I can improve it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tomasz Surmacz (tsurmacz@ict.pwr.wroc.pl), 7.08.1995