News software for Sun networks

[Robert Perlberg]

Here's how I have news set up on our Suns:

All news related directories are on filesystems that are NFS mounted by
all machines.  The sys file entry for the local machine uses the name "ME"
instead of the actual machine name.  This way, all machines use the same
sys file and use the same line in that sys file as if it were their own
personal line, but the machines are not aware of each other's existence
since there are no other machines named in the sys file (other than
legitimate USENET machines that we communicate with).

We use batching for all outgoing news.  Since we only have one news feed
and supply news to no one, we would ordinarily not use batching for
outgoing news, such as this posting.  However, the batching mechanism
allows news to be posted from any machine.  When an article is posted, it
goes to the appropriate newsgroup directory, which is NFS mounted.  The
posting host then stores the name of the article file in the batch file
which is also NFS mounted.  At night, the host which is really on the
USENET reads the batch file and queues the articles to the USENET.

To top it off, we define HIDDENNET to the name of the host which does the
actual USENET communication so that all articles look like they came from
that machine.  This is important since it is the posting host which
generates the Path line in the header, and the USENET host uses that line
in utilities like rnews which run only on the USENET host.

Robert Perlberg
Dean Witter Reynolds Inc., New York
phri!{dasys1 | philabs | mancol}!step!perl