🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 24 Apr 1998 14:07:00 GMT  Gil Emery Jr (gemery@tiac.net) wrote:
> I am looking to contact the person at america.edu that is incharge of the  
> gateways, I lost his address-- If you are reading this please respond to me.

It's Peter M. O'Donnell, Unix Systems Administrator pmod@american.edu

If your question concerns the current state of the gateway, I sent e-mail 
this morining to the effect that bit.listserv.vse-l hasn't seen any 
mail through their gateway since mid-Tuesday 4/21.
-- 

_____________________________________________________________________________
Wayne S. Mery        | Systems Programmer, Lehigh University  610-758-3983
wsm0@lehigh.edu      | http://www.lehigh.edu/~wsm0         
VSE/ESA 1.2 VM/HPO 5 | http://www.lehigh.edu/lists/vse-l/ <---VSE mail list

                  **         Save a Life        **
                  **  Sign an Organ Donor card  **
   **  http://www.transweb.org        for more information    **

In article <6hqa85$crs@ns4-1.CC.Lehigh.EDU>,
Wayne S. Mery <wsm0@Lehigh.EDU> wrote:
>
>If your question concerns the current state of the gateway, I sent e-mail 
>this morining to the effect that bit.listserv.vse-l hasn't seen any 
>mail through their gateway since mid-Tuesday 4/21.

Me too.  No e-mail list posts mirrored to bit.listserv.transplant since
4/19.  Posts to the newsgroup however, are being distributed normally, and
I'm getting them sent to me for approval for the e-mail list.

Mike Holloway
holloway@concentric.net

I've learned through Lstown-L that American.edu has decided to kill all
gating to newsgroups by attrition, except for on-campus use.  This
apparently means that they're going to ignore all problems and attempts at
communication.  They've been great about providing this service all these
years, but I've hoped for a more polite way of ending it.

Does anyone have plans for what to do now?  Are there other sites with a
similar service?  Does anyone have a unix script with documentation enough
to allow a non-programmer to use it?  Let's share our ideas in this
newsgroup.  

Thanks,
Mike Holloway
holloway@concentric.net

MIKEHOLLOWAY <Holloway@cris.com> writes:

> Does anyone have plans for what to do now?  Are there other sites with a
> similar service?  Does anyone have a unix script with documentation
> enough to allow a non-programmer to use it?  Let's share our ideas in
> this newsgroup.

I do a lot of mail to news gatewaying and even wrote a toolkit to do it.
I may be able to provide some sort of standard package.  If what you're
reporting is correct, one question would be whether we all intend to stay
in bit.* or move to some other hierarchy.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)         <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

In article <m33eew8bx5.fsf@windlord.Stanford.EDU>,
Russ Allbery  <rra@stanford.edu> wrote:
>  If what you're
>reporting is correct, one question would be whether we all intend to stay
>in bit.* or move to some other hierarchy.

Jim McIntosh had also stated, many moons ago, that the American.edu
service was going to be phased out.  I just didn't expect it to be
smuthered to death.

It would be too confusing for my users to change newgroup names now.
The bit.listserv name also functions as an identifier for a gated
newsgroup.

If your script just needs some custumization of path statements it should
be something that even I could handle.  A roll your own gateway
presupposes that the newsgroup is set for moderation, doesn't it, or the
transfer from newsgroup to mail list doesn't work.  Posted messages have
to be mailed to the server, as well as approved for posting.  

I've received a reply to my question in another newsgroup, but it answers
only the mail to news side of the question, and not vice versa:

From: "Sam" <sam-000@usa.net>
[1] Re: Mail to news gateway help?
Followup-To: cnc.inet                     

All you need to do is to glue on a Newsgroups: header, and mail it to a
mail2news gateway.  The two that I use are:

mail2news@basement.replay.com
mail2news@anon.lcs.mit.edu

You can try something like this:

formail -f -I "From " -I "To:" -I "Errors-To:" \
   -I "Received:" -I ">Return-Path:" -I "Return-Path:" \
   -I "MBOX-Line:" -I "X-Status:" -I "X-UIDL:" | \
  /usr/lib/sendmail mail2news@basement.replay.com mail2news@anon.lcs.mit.edu

That presumes that you already have a Newsgroups: header on your message.   

-------------------------------------------------------

Now, can LISTSERV insert a header?  This is getting very complicated.

Mike Holloway

MIKEHOLLOWAY <Holloway@cris.com> writes:

> It would be too confusing for my users to change newgroup names now.
> The bit.listserv name also functions as an identifier for a gated
> newsgroup.

The problem is who holds the keys to the bit.listserv.* hierarchy in terms
of removing groups, creating new groups, changing moderation status, and
so forth.  I don't know what American University's transition plans are.

Fair enough, certainly; I personally intend to move my group to mod.* when
it gets started (finally).

> If your script just needs some custumization of path statements it
> should be something that even I could handle.

It needs Perl 5.003, libnet, and the ability to install Perl modules; if
you have all of that, I should be able to hand you something really
generic for gating mail to a newsgroup, although I don't have something on
hand right away (I have stuff that I use, but it's more customized and not
quite generic enough).

> A roll your own gateway presupposes that the newsgroup is set for
> moderation, doesn't it, or the transfer from newsgroup to mail list
> doesn't work.  Posted messages have to be mailed to the server, as well
> as approved for posting.

The preferred way to handle it is to set the moderation address of the
newsgroup to point to either the list itself (if you want easy posting) or
to the list owner (if you want to check everything first and approve
things manually).  Then the mail to news gateway is subscribed to the
mailing list and everything that goes through the list shows up in the
newsgroup.

Provided the newsgroup is moderated, this works wonderfully.

> I've received a reply to my question in another newsgroup, but it
> answers only the mail to news side of the question, and not vice versa:

> From: "Sam" <sam-000@usa.net>
> [1] Re: Mail to news gateway help?
> Followup-To: cnc.inet                     

> All you need to do is to glue on a Newsgroups: header, and mail it to a
> mail2news gateway.  The two that I use are:

With all due respect to Sam, I consider this to be extremely poor advice.
For one thing, you're relying on notoriously flaky general mail to news
gateways to maintain the gating of your list when it's easy enough to just
do it yourself, and for another you want to do a lot more rewriting of the
messages than that before you send them along to the newsgroup.

I also don't believe this deals correctly with moderated groups.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)         <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

(posted also to lstown-l)

Gateway status:

As best I can determine (based on my mailing list), mail is flowing from
usenet to the mailing list.  But it is not working in the reverse
direction - mail from the mailing lists is not getting through the
gateway to usenet.  This started on Tuesday 4/21.

On Saturday 4/25 I sent the above info to AU.  Peter at AU forwarded
my message to the Unix guys who maintain some aspect of the machines
or gateway (Peter is no longer involved).  

I sent a followup message to these two early this week.  They have not 
contacted me nor have they posted any followup information to bit.admin.

Now, almost one week later, it appears it wont be fixed, even though
it's probably very simple to fix.

To state the obvious, regardless of the situation we should all be
polite in our dealings with AU.  Whomever we contact is probably not
a decision maker.  We should be glad they supported us thus far,
even if the lack of notice and the procedure for eliminating their
gateway service has been dismal.
-- 

_____________________________________________________________________________
Wayne S. Mery        | Systems Programmer, Lehigh University  610-758-3983
wsm0@lehigh.edu      | http://www.lehigh.edu/~wsm0         
VSE/ESA 1.2 VM/HPO 5 | http://www.lehigh.edu/lists/vse-l/ <---VSE mail list

                  **         Save a Life        **
                  **  Sign an Organ Donor card  **
   **  http://www.transweb.org        for more information    **

In article <6ia491$1t0c@ns4-1.CC.Lehigh.EDU>, wsm0@Lehigh.EDU 
says...
>
>(posted also to lstown-l)
>
>Gateway status:
>
>As best I can determine (based on my mailing list), mail is flowing from
>usenet to the mailing list.  But it is not working in the reverse
>direction - mail from the mailing lists is not getting through the
>gateway to usenet.  This started on Tuesday 4/21.

This seems to be true, all right.

>On Saturday 4/25 I sent the above info to AU.  Peter at AU forwarded
>my message to the Unix guys who maintain some aspect of the machines
>or gateway (Peter is no longer involved).  

This isn't quite so. Peter is still our main Unix guy, and still has 
responsibility
for the usenet and listserv processes that run in a Unix environment.
The actual gateway runs on VM, however, and Peter was (mistakenly,
I believe) under the impression that the problem we're currently
experiencing was with the VM-resident gateway. I believe the real
problem is on our Unix-resident news server. I hope to have it fixed
by tomorrow.

>I sent a followup message to these two early this week.  They have not 
>contacted me nor have they posted any followup information to bit.admin.

Please forgive our lack of responsiveness.  The last few weeks have
been rough for many of us, with deaths in families, illnesses, major
changes in computing systems, and so on, and frankly the usenet-listserv
gateway, being at best tangential to our institutional mission, is a very
low priority item.

>Now, almost one week later, it appears it wont be fixed, even though
>it's probably very simple to fix.

It will be fixed.

>To state the obvious, regardless of the situation we should all be
>polite in our dealings with AU.  Whomever we contact is probably not
>a decision maker.  We should be glad they supported us thus far,
>even if the lack of notice and the procedure for eliminating their
>gateway service has been dismal.

I don't know where this rumor that we were eliminating our gateway
service came from. We will indeed have to drop it or replace it
with something else eventually, but we have no intention of
discontinuing it immediately. Because it runs on VM, and because
we will be de-installing VM, we will have to stop doing what we're
doing now, but that is some time off. We'll be running VM and
the gateway at least till the end of 1998--unless, of course, someone
out there wants to take it on before then.

--
Herschel Browne    hersch@american.edu          You never know what is
Director, Network Software                                    enough unless you know
American University                                                what is more than enough.
Washington, DC 20016 202-885-3802                          --Wm. Blake
 

Sorry for any inaccuracies in my posting.  I can appreciate everything
you describe in your situation - been there recently.  Was a bit blue
on the possibility that the gateway might be on its way out, given no
email from anyone but Peter.

I don't follow the information lstown-l, where it appears they have been
discussing for some time the eventual demise of your gateway and
how it might be replaced, software, etc.  I only went there yesterday
after someone said they were discussing this subject.  I will pass
your note to them.

If someone from AU could write a very breif description of how the
gateway works and resources involved and posted it, then someone might
step forward to coordinate the changes needed.  Some planning might
make us all happy - even if the gateway got split up into several
sites.  With y2k and the usual crap at work, the end of 1988 will come
mighty quick.

Thank for the update.

Cheers
Wayne
-- 

_____________________________________________________________________________
Wayne S. Mery        | Systems Programmer, Lehigh University  610-758-3983
wsm0@lehigh.edu      | http://www.lehigh.edu/~wsm0         
VSE/ESA 1.2 VM/HPO 5 | http://www.lehigh.edu/lists/vse-l/ <---VSE mail list

                  **         Save a Life        **
                  **  Sign an Organ Donor card  **
   **  http://www.transweb.org        for more information    **

>That presumes that you already have a Newsgroups: header on your message.   

>Now, can LISTSERV insert a header?  This is getting very complicated.
>
>Mike Holloway


Yup.  In Listserv1.8c, at least, just add 

*  Newsgroups:  bit.listserv.listname

to your header.

-- 
Mark

drake@asu.edu

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Herschel Browne (hersch@american.edu) wrote:
: In article <6ia491$1t0c@ns4-1.CC.Lehigh.EDU>, wsm0@Lehigh.EDU 
: says...
: >
: >As best I can determine (based on my mailing list), mail is flowing from
: >usenet to the mailing list.  But it is not working in the reverse
: >direction - mail from the mailing lists is not getting through the
: >gateway to usenet.  This started on Tuesday 4/21.

	the problem was with innfeed, a package we use to feed our peers. it
had hung and i didn't notice because no one complained. i have restarted all
relevant processes and it seems to be functioning normally now.

- --
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Peter M. O'Donnell    }    pmod@american.edu    { "Cynicism was my whiskey
Unix Systems Administrator{-------------------------}   and I had a few..."
   "Clickity-Clickity"    }      202-885-3806       {      -Bruce McCulloch
******************************************************************************
*********************** http://www.abs.net/~pmod/mydad/ **********************


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