Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Thu, 27 Sep 2001 01:35:22 +0300 | From | Matti Aarnio <> | Subject | Re: newsgroup of all mailing lists ? |
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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 - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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