[187] in Info-AFS_Redistribution
Re: C news and hard links
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bob Dew)
Tue Jul 2 17:42:56 1991
Date: Tue, 2 Jul 1991 16:50:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: Bob Dew <rdew+@alw.nih.gov>
To: "Jonathan I. Kamens" <jik@pit-manager.mit.edu>
Cc: Info-AFS@transarc.com
In-Reply-To: <9107021950.AA03186@pit-manager.MIT.EDU>
Excerpts from mail: 2-Jul-91 C news and hard links "Jonathan I.
Kamens"@pit (498)
> I was under the impression that C News *does* use hard links when it
> can do so, but falls back on symbolic linking when a hard link fails.
The mechanism for filing news articles in C News is fundamentally
different from that in B News.
In B News, the main store and forward utility, inews, works by
collecting news in a common tmp directory, linking articles to
respective newsgroup directory names, then unlinking everything from the
tmp directory. One can imagine the fun of replacing "symlink" with the
"link" command under B News!
(The articles dissapear).
Under C News, the main driving utility is called relaynews.
Relaynews copies news articles to respective directories, and provides
links (hard if possible, symbolic otherwise) to cross posted articles.
The B News filing mechanism is an AFS nightmare, for the inews
program is riddled throughout with hard links. C News, on the other
hand, lends itself nicely to AFS adaptation, without need for any code
modification by the installer.
Once on AFS, remote NETNEWS readers can use their regular NNTP
reading and posting programs to access the AFS spooling area, as the
nntp daemon runs "authenticated", and can grant anyone who is otherwise
nntp-authorized access to news.
Bob
