[plug] New PLUG news server

[Bernd Felsche]

James Devenish <devenish at guild.uwa.edu.au> writes:

>In message <veip22xqk9.ln2 at innovative.iinet.net.au>
>on Wed, Sep 29, 2004 at 10:15:27AM +0800, Bernd Felsche wrote:
>> We're talking about articles posted *before* the news server came
>> online.

>Agreed.

>> Install leafnode on your Linux box, set up the BIOS to alarm every 3
>> days and then set it to fetchnews when connected to the net. After
>> collection, set the next alarm in the BIOS and do a shutdown.

>You must be kidding. Why go to the effort of creating a new server and
>news service if it is just to be hobbled? I personally wanted to see a

You and I appear to be talking about different things.

The method described above provides for downloading of most news
articles during absence. And a means of providing comfortable
access.

>news server because it can be better than an e-mail list, rather than
>merely on-par. By the way, you're the one who put forward the idea that
>the news server could be the official message archive. I don't see how
>that could be fulfilled if it was missing almost everything.

There are headaches/issues with injecting 5-year-old articles into a
newsgroup. The server will simply reject the articles if they exceed
the maximum permissible age for the newsgroups. Also, for people who
have not previously connected, the backlog of many thousands of
headers will cause significant initial connection delays.

My recommendation is therefore that the archives not be placed in
the main list newsgroup. People who want to dig through the archives
probably expect to take a little longer.

>> If the custodians feel inspired, they could set up a "plug.replay"
>> newsgroup and throw the list archives in there. Just make sure that
>> you set the newsgroup to status "n", which means no postings at all.
>> May be useful as an exercise.

>Or...just put the messages into plug.list and plug.ramble (or whatever
>it's called).

I don't run the server. I can only make what I believe to be
reasonable suggestions based on a little experience with running and
maintaining news servers since 1989, and contributing to the C-News
and nn software packages in minor ways.
-- 
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