5 Setting Up News as a Local Reader/Server
5.9 Creating newsgroups on your system
Now that News is up and running, you'll need to create the newsgroups you plan
to carry on your system. By default, News will not create new groups to
accommodate incoming items which have unknown newsgroup names in their
Newsgroups: header. This can be overridden by specifying the /CreGrp qualifier
to the Add File command, but this is generally a bad idea, since it will result
in the creation of many bogus newsgroups in response to typographic errors or
pranks in the headers of incoming items. In fact, it's a good idea in general
to manually review any group creation or deletion, so that you don't suddenly
find your system in a mess because of bad network control messages.
About now, you may be thinking, with a touch of panic, "I'm planning to carry
2500 newsgroups, and I have to create every one of them BY HAND???" Relax -
all is not lost. Since most of the newsgroups you're carrying probably fall
into established hierarchies, you can take advantage of a mechanism known as a
checkgroups message to streamline newsgroup creation. A checkgroups message is
a posting which contains a listing of newsgroup names and titles (one line
descriptions of the groups' purposes), as well as information identifying
moderated newsgroups. When this posting is fed to News as a control message,
it will automatically create a DCL procedure containing the commands necessary
to create the groups listed in the posting, and will mail this procedure to the
local address USENET. A template for a checkgroups message which covers the
Usenet groups is regularly posted to the newsgroup news.announce.newgroups (see
if you can borrow temporary access to news on a system which is already up and
running). If you are setting up your system to match the newsgroups carried on
another system running News, you can ask someone on that system to execute the
News command Extract/Directory=NewsGroupTitles to obtain a list of newsgroups
you can use as the basis for a checkgroups message. In addition, the
administrative newsgroups for various other hierarchies often carry checkgroups
postings, or lists of newsgroups which can easily be edited into a checkgroups
message, following the pattern of the one from news.announce.newgroups. Using
this posting as an example, here is how to create the groups you want on your
system:
-
Extract the template posting into a file.
-
Cut off all lines above and below the lines marked "cut to this line"
-
Change the Newsgroups: header so that the item will be added to the
'control' newsgroup you created earlier (and no other groups).
-
Be certain that the Distribution: header includes only distributions
limited to your system.
-
Add an Approved: header to the list of headers, such as
Approved: yourname@yoursite (the address you use is irrelevant).
-
Go through the list of newsgroups, and remove those you do not want to
create on your system.
-
Save the edited message to a file.
-
Bypass your News profile settings by issuing the command
$ Define/User NewsRC _NL:
This is a useful practice in general when invoking News just to perform some
management task, as it eliminates unnecessary processing at startup. It is
required when processing checkgroups messages, because some profile settings
(notably FASTLOAD) cause unpleasant side-effects during checkgroups processing.
-
Invoke News from an account holding the News_Mgr_ID identifier. Then
execute the command
Add File/GenID filename
where filename is the name of the edited checkgroups file. News will
generate a DCL procedure to create the necessary newsgroups and set the
titles and moderation status properly. This procedure will be mailed to
the local address USENET. Alternatively, if you specify the /Execute
qualifier with the Add File command, News will create the newsgroups
immediately.
-
When the mail message arrives, extract it to a file, check it over,
edit off the mail headers, and execute it as a DCL procedure from an account
with the News_Mgr_ID identifier. News will set up the newsgroups specified.
Once you have done this for each hierarchy you will carry, you should manually
create any newsgroups not included in checkgroups messages (e.g. local
newsgroups).
This completes the setup of your local system. It is now ready to receive items
from incoming feeds, and to allow local users to read and post items.
previous: 5.8 Running News for the first time
next: 5.10 Setting up the NNTP server
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