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This section fills in gaps which were hard to classify under any of the previous chapters.
badexpiry: utility to look for articles with bad explicit Expiry headers
checkactive: utility to perform some sanity checks on the active file
cnewsdo: utility to perform some checks and then run C-News maintenance commands
controlperm: configuration file for controlling responses to Usenet control messages
expire: utility to expire old articles
explode: internal utility to convert a master batch file to ordinary batch files
inews: the program which forms the entry point for fresh postings to be injected into the Usenet system
mergeactive: utility to merge one site's newsgroups to another site's active file
mkhistory: utility to rebuild news history file
news(5): description of Usenet news article file and batch file formats
newsaux: a collection of C-News utilities used by its own scripts and by the Usenet news administrator for various maintenance purposes
newsbatch: covers all the utilities and programs which are part of the news batching system of C-News
newsctl: describes the file formats and uses of all the files in $NEWSCTL other than the two key files, sys and active
newsdb: describes the key files and directories for news articles, including the structure of $NEWSARTS, the active file, the active.times file, and the history file.
newsflag: utility to change the flag or type column of a newsgroup in the active file
newsmail: utility scripts used to send and receive newsfeeds by email. This is different from a mail-to-news gateway, since this is for communication between two Usenet news servers.
newsmaint: utility scripts used by Usenet administrator to manage and maintain C-News system
newsoverview(5): file formats for the NOV database
newsoverview(8): library functions of the NOV library and the utilities which use them
newssys: the important sys file of C-News
relaynews: the relaynews program of C-News
report: utility to generate and send email reports of errors and events from C-News scripts
rnews: receive news batches and queue them for processing
nntpd: The NNTP daemon
nntpxmit: The NNTP batch transmit program for outgoing push feeds
This very interesting paper has been mentioned in the section titled "Usenet software: a historical perspective>". It is titled ``News Need Not Be Slow'', and is available from ftp://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/doc/programming/c-news.* or from our Website (http://www.starcomsoftware.com/proj/usenet/doc/c-news.{ps,pdf}).
It focuses on B News, analyses it for performance, and demonstrates how specific changes in design and implementation can speed things up. It is well-written, and is educative in many areas independent of Usenet news.
news.admin.technical Discusses technical issues about administering Usenet news
news.admin.policy Discusses policy issues about Usenet news
news.software.b Discusses C-News (no separate newsgroup was created after B-News gave way to C-News) source, configuration and bugs (if any)
MORE WILL BE ADDED LATER
We also offer you an integrated source distribution of C News, NNTPd, as discussed earlier in the section titled "Setting up C News + NNTPd>". This integrated source distribution fixes some bugs in the component packages it includes, and it comes pre-configured with ready made configuration files which allow all components to be compiled and installed on a Linux server in a manner by which they can work together (e.g. key directory paths are specified consistently across all components, etc.) This is available at http://www.starcomsoftware.com/proj/usenet/src/
The URL http://www.starcomsoftware.com/proj/usenet/src/archives/ holds the original sources of some of the software components we base our distribution on. These include C News (c-news.tar.Z), NNTPd (nntp.1.5.12.1.tar.Z), and Nestor (nestor.tar.Z). Other components, like pgpverify are maintained by their current maintainers and can be obtained from their respective sites. Therefore, they are not included in our archives.
The URL http://www.starcomsoftware.com/proj/usenet/doc/ carries copies of some of the important technical articles and Usenix papers on the subject of the Usenet.
We will endeavour to answer all queries sent to usenet@starcomsoftware.com, pertaining to the source distribution we have put together and its configuration and maintenance, and also pertaining to general technical issues related to running a Usenet news service off a Unix or Linux server.
We may not be in a position to assist with software components we are not familiar with, e.g. Leafnode, or platforms we do not have access to, e.g. SGI IRIX. Intel Linux will be supported as long as our group is alive; our entire office runs on Linux servers and diskless Linux desktops.
You are not forced to be dependent on us, because neither do we have proprietary knowledge nor proprietary closed-source software. All the extensions we are currently involved in with C-News and NNTPd will immediately be made available to the Internet in freely redistributable source form.