[rescue] UUCP network

[Dave McGuire]

On 05/16/2015 10:17 AM, Andrew M Hoerter wrote:
>> This is a little off-topic but I think relevant to the interests of
>> this list. If I wanted to set up a system for disseminating
>> USENET-style newsgroups via dial-up links, how would I get started?
>> Anyone have good documentation for setting up that sort of thing?
> 
> For the UUCP layer, the Taylor docs are pretty good:
> <http://www.airs.com/ian/uucp-doc/>
> 
> Id guess that most currently available Unixes with a UUCP package are likely
> using Taylor, so those docs should apply directly.
> 
> As for the USENET part, when I had my feed ages ago I was using c-news.  It
> comes with adequate docs to get you started, and I think the OReilly UUCP
> book covers it as well.  But I havent tried c-news on any modern Unix, you
> may run into some minor troubles there.
> 
> Id stay away from INN though, I remember it being a major pain to configure
> and very needy maintenance-wise, vs. c-news being dead simple.  Perhaps its
> improved since then.

  Wow.  When I read this, I couldn't help but think that maybe you'd
gotten the two mixed up.  Moving from C to INN was the time when I
suddenly started getting a good night's sleep, started going out to
dinner more often, and actually got laid once in awhile.

  INN also has the benefit of being currently-maintained software.

  My current news server requires ZERO maintenance excecpt for when
control messages come down the pipe (about once a week) and they take
about ten seconds each to deal with.  Otherwise it is 100%
maintenance-free, for a ~16GB news spool with a full feed sans binary
groups and about a dozen regular readers.

  It took about an hour to get up and running, excluding email
interactions with my upstream feed administrator.

  If you're looking for nostalgia, run B or C.  If you're looking to run
a news server to read and post news, run INN.

  But for dialup feeds...ugh, no idea.  The last time I ran a dialup
news feed, they were current services that one could purchase.

               -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA