On Wed, Sep 26, 2001 at 07:40:33PM +0100, jones wrote:
> dear all
>
> I would like to know which kind people turn the mailing list into a
> newsgroup ?
There are several Issues with this.
- News system uses Message-ID header content to detect when
a message has already gone thru the system, and when not.
That is, the Message-ID MUST BE UNIQUE for the message to
be stored into the message spool.
- User posting to multiple lists (e.g. linux-kernel, linux-net
for an example pair) MAY get sent out in single SMTP transfer
all the way to vger.kernel.org ( except when the user's system
uses braindead systems splitting things in transfer - like is
the habit of qmail ...). The message WILL get split into
multiple deliveries when it goes via Majordomo to each separate
destination list. Both messages have SAME Message-ID value.
(The Message-ID is supposed to be generated by the posting
user client.)
- Having any arbitrary email->news gateway now trying to feed
those two separate messages to news will result in random
success/failure order (depending of various latencies).
- Things are worse, there are lots of these gw:s around to feed
lists to news. Those same news servers also often leak the groups
into the global net, and may poison your local message-id database,
and hence the local copy feed to spool might fail.
( Again timing and propagation delays affect the thing.. )
- Things get even more worse; some want to have bi-directional
gateway in between the email and the news. Those are full
nightmares in broad daylight...
It is not trivial.
We ( postmaster@vger.kernel.org ) don't recommend making bidirectional
gateways -- one mistake there, and the system causes duplication of
messages at the list it is linked with. When we detect that mistake,
the usual court-martial is swift, and feed from VGER to the GW is
removed instantly.
I think these loop problems were one of the reasons why one of us
(DaveM) strongly opposes list<->news gateways. I am somewhat less
in opposition, and my thinking is that the only way we can have
reliable (hah!) list<->news gw is by running it centralized at VGER.
Modern VGER has muscle for it, but don't expect it to happen any
time soon.
There were other problems too -- completely clueless people asking
clueless questions at linux-kernel group. Where cluefull place
for most of those would have been linux-newbie ...
We try to keep some decent Signal to Noise ratio here.
Using a email->news gw script, and keeping the destination group
in local area (local spool) will work usually. Creating brand new
Message-ID:s at email->news injection in form which consists of
e.g. local list-specific prefix catenated with original message-id
string.
I will attempt to schedule posting this text into vger's web for
the curious, plus add sample email->news injector doing this
message-id conversion.
> this would enable me to read at my leisure and not have my inbox overflow.
> I am connected to NTL (UK) the same as I believe Mr. A Cox, but I can not
> find a working newsgroup the NTL administrator has asked me for details and
> I am afraid I don't know (hence this mail).
>
> can someone give me some advice ?
>
> regards
>
> john jones
>
> p.s. I am not subscribed to the list so can you CC me or the list whichever
> is appropriate
>
> p.p.s. I am interested in other lists such as linux-mips and not just the
> core linux M.L.
/Matti Aarnio
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Sep 30 2001 - 21:00:52 EST