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Usenet Software: History and Sources

There are reader questions on this topic!Helpothers by sharing your knowledgeDate: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 09:00:19 GMTMessage-ID: <FnG10J.HAo@tac.nyc.ny.us>From: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)Subject: Usenet Software: History and SourcesNewsgroups: news.admin.misc, news.announce.newusers, news.software.readers, news.software.bArchive-name: usenet/software/part1Original-from: spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)Comment: edited until 5/93 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)Last-change: 9 Feb 1998 by netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)Changes-posted-to: news.admin.misc,news.misc,news.software.readers,news.software.b,news.answersCurrently, Usenet readers interact with the news using a number ofsoftware packages and programs. This article mentions the importantones and a little of their history, gives pointers where you can lookfor more information and ends with some special notes about "foreign"and "obsolete" software. At the very end is a list of sites from whichcurrent versions of the Usenet software may be obtained.Note that the number of software packages available to run news,especially on PCs, is increasing. This article lists only a few ofthe many news packages available, and the presence or absence of anyparticular software package should not be construed as indicatinganything about its suitability or usefulness.The material contained in this post is probably not 100% up-to-date.Many of the software packages described in this posting are undergoingconstant development, and it is not always possible to know when newreleases have been made. Should you discover that information in thispost has been superseded by a new release, please send mail to the posterof this article with the corrected information.While the "official" ftp archive sites for packages are listed, note thatmost large archive sites carry news software; please try the one nearestto you before you use up expensive bandwidth on a trans-continentalnetwork link. You can check the official site for the current versionnumber, if you want to make sure you're getting the latest version. Ingeneral, a good place to get recent versions of the more popular newstransport and reading software by anonymous ftp isftp.uu.net:/networking/news/ directory.History-------Usenet came into being in late 1979, shortly after the release of V7Unix with UUCP. Two Duke University grad students in North Carolina,Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, thought of hooking computers together toexchange information with the Unix community. Steve Bellovin, a gradstudent at the University of North Carolina, put together the firstversion of the news software using shell scripts and installed it onthe first two sites: "unc" and "duke." At the beginning of 1980 thenetwork consisted of those two sites and "phs" (another machine atDuke), and was described at the January Usenix conference. SteveBellovin later rewrote the scripts into C programs, but they were neverreleased beyond "unc" and "duke." Shortly thereafter, Steve Daniel didanother implementation in C for public distribution. Tom Truscott madefurther modifications, and this became the "A" news release.In 1981 at U. C. Berkeley, grad student Mark Horton and high schoolstudent Matt Glickman rewrote the news software to add functionalityand to cope with the ever increasing volume of news -- "A" News wasintended for only a few articles per group per day. This rewrite wasthe "B" News version. The first public release was version 2.1 in1982; the 1.* versions were all beta test. As the net grew, the newssoftware was expanded and modified. The last version maintained andreleased primarily by Mark was 2.10.1.Rick Adams, at the Center for Seismic Studies, took over coordinationof the maintenance and enhancement of the B News software with the2.10.2 release in 1984. By this time, the increasing volume of newswas becoming a concern, and the mechanism for moderated groups wasadded to the software at 2.10.2. Moderated groups were inspired byARPA mailing lists and experience with other bulletin board systems.In late 1986, version 2.11 of B News was released, including a numberof changes to support a new naming structure for newsgroups, enhancedbatching and compression, enhanced ihave/sendme control messages, andother features.The final release of B News was 2.11, patchlevel 19. B News has beendeclared "dead" by a number of people, including Rick Adams, and isunlikely to be upgraded further; most Usenet sites are using C News orINN (see next paragraphs).In March 1986 a package was released implementing news transmission,posting, and reading using the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP)(as specified in RFC 977). This protocol allows hosts to exchangearticles via TCP/IP connections rather than using the traditionaluucp. It also permits users to read and post news (using a modifiednews user agent) from machines which cannot or choose not to installthe Usenet news software. Reading and posting are done using TCP/IPmessages to a server host which does run the Usenet software. Siteswhich have many workstations like the Sun and SGI, and HP productsfind this a convenient way to allow workstation users to read newswithout having to store articles on each system. Many of the Usenethosts that are also on the Internet exchange news articles using NNTPbecause the load impact of NNTP is much lower than uucp (and NNTPensures much faster propagation).NNTP grew out of independent work in 1984-1985 by Brian Kantor at U. C.San Diego and Phil Lapsley at U. C. Berkeley. Primary development wasdone at U. C. Berkeley by by Phil Lapsley with help from Erik Fair,Steven Grady, and Mike Meyer, among others. The NNTP package (nowcalled the reference implementation) was distributed on the 4.3BSDrelease tape (although that was version 1.2a and out-of-date) and isalso available on many major hosts by anonymous FTP. The currentversion is 1.5.12.2. It includes NOV (News Overview -- see below)support and runs on a wide variety of systems. It is available fromftp.academ.com:/pub/nntp1.5/nntp.1.5.12.2.tar.gz. For those withaccess to the World-Wide Web on the Internet, the WWW pagehttp://www.academ.com/academ/nntp.html contains a description and newsabout NNTP. A different variant, called nntp-t5, implements many of theextensions provided by INN (including NOV support). It is availablefrom ftp.uu.net:/networking/news/nntp/nntp-t5.tar.gz.One widely-used version of news, known as C News, was developed at theUniversity of Toronto by Geoff Collyer and Henry Spencer. This versionis a rewrite of the lowest levels of news to increase articleprocessing speed, decrease article expiration processing and improvethe reliability of the news system through better locking, etc. Thepackage was released to the net in the autumn of 1987. For moreinformation, see the paper "News Need Not Be Slow," published in TheWinter 1987 Usenix Technical Conference proceedings. This paper isalso available from ftp.cs.toronto.edu in doc/programming/c-news.*, andis recommended reading for all news software programmers. The mostrecent version of C News is the Sept 1994 "Cleanup Release." C Newscan be obtained by anonymous ftp from its official archive site,ftp.cs.toronto.edu:pub/c-news/c-news.tar.Z.Another Usenet system, known as InterNetNews, or INN, was written by RichSalz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net>. INN is designed to run on Unix hosts that havea socket interface. It is optimized for larger hosts where most trafficuses NNTP, but it does provide full UUCP support. INN is very fast, andsince it integrates NNTP many people find it easier to administer only onepackage. The package was publicly released on August 20, 1992. For moreinformation, see the paper "InterNetNews: Usenet Transport for InternetSites" published in the June 1992 Usenix Technical Conference Proceedings.INN can be obtained from many places, including the 4.4BSD tape; itsofficial archive site is ftp.uu.net in the directory/networking/news/nntp/inn. Rich's last official release was 1.4sec inDec 1993.In June 1995, David Barr began a series of unoffical releases of INN basedon 1.4sec, integrating various bug-fixes, enhancements and securitypatches. His last release was 1.4unoff4, found inftp://ftp.math.psu.edu/pub/. This site is also the home of contributedsoftware for INN and other news administration tools.INN is now maintained by the Internet Software Consortium <inn@isc.org>.The official INN home is now http://www.isc.org/isc/ and the latest version(1.7.2) can be obtained from ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/inn/Towards the end of 1992, Geoff Collyer implemented NOV (News Overview): adatabase that stores the important headers of all news articles as theyarrive. This is intended for use by the implementors of news readers toprovide fast article presentation by sorting and "threading" the articleheaders. (Before NOV, newsreaders like trn, tin and nn came with theirown daemons and databases that used a nontrivial amount of systemresources). NOV is fully supported by C News, INN and NNTP-t5. Mostmodern news readers use NOV to get information for their threading andarticle menu presentation; use of NOV by a newsreader is fairly easy,since NOV comes with sample client-side threading code.ANU-NEWS is news package written by Geoff Huston of Australia for VMSsystems. ANU-NEWS is a complete news system that allows reading,posting, direct replies, moderated newsgroups, etc. in a fashionclosely related to regular news. The implementation includes the RFC1036 news propagation algorithms and integrated use of the NNTPprotocols (see below) to support remote news servers, implemented as aVAX/VMS Decnet object. An RFC 977 server implemented as a Decnetobject is also included. ANU-NEWS currently includes support for thefollowing TCP/IP protocols: MultiNet, CMU/TEK, Wollongong WIN/TCP, UCX(TCP/IP Services for OpenVMS), EXOS, and TCPware. The ANU-NEWSinterface is similar to standard DEC screen oriented systems. Thelicense for the software is free, and there are no restrictions on there-distribution. For more info, contact gih900@fac.anu.oz.au (GeoffHuston). ANU-NEWS is available for FTP from kuhub.cc.ukans.edu.Contact SLOANE@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU for more info.A screen-oriented news client for VMS that works with CMU/tek, EXOS,MultiNet, UCX, Wollongong and DECnet is also available via ftp fromiraun1.ira.uka.de, info.rz.uni-ulm.de, and ftp.spc.edu (contact BerndOnasch <uranus@pilhuhn.ka.sub.org> for details).Reader NNTP clients for VMS are also available, including VMS/VNEWS(current release 1.4) and an upcoming reader only version of ANU-NEWS.VMS/VNEWS is available via anonymous ftp from arizona.edu (contactjms@arizona.edu for more information) or at any site which archivesvmsnet.source. Although the current release of ANU-NEWS is usable asa reader it can be difficult when used with a UNIX server.FNEWS is a fast news reader, for VAX/VMS and UNIX. It is basically amixture of NEWSRDR and ANU-NEWS, (a bit like 'nn' in how it works) givinga nice (but different) full-screen interface and fast response to thousands of groups without heavily loading your local machine. It works bycaching the news indexes from a UNIX news system (CNEWS or INN), and thendynamically loading the items when the user wants to read them. Indexesare only cached for groups which are actually read, so the load and diskusage can be very small. FNEWS Versions are available for VMS, ALPHA-VMSand UNIX via anonymous ftp from ftp.std.com in /ftp/vendors/emagic/fnews.Contact chrisp@marc.cri.nz for more information.A port of C News for the Commodore Amiga under AmigaDOS (NOT Unix), isavailable. The port was done by Frank J. Edwards <crash@ckctpa.uucp>,and available from Larry Rosenman <ler@lerami.lerctr.org>. Also,Matt Dillon <dillon@overload.berkely.ca.us>, has greatly improved theUUCP clone for AmigaDOS, currently V1.16D, available for ftp fromftp.uu.net in /systems/amiga/dillon. The package also includes anewsreader very loosely like the real rn. Dillon also has a "vn" portprovided by Eric Lee Green. This software is also available on Bix,and for ftp from wuarchive.wustl.edu (many other Amiga newsreaders arealso available on theis ftp site).The traditional line-oriented "readnews" interface was followed by severalpopular screen-oriented news reading interfaces. The first of these was"vnews" and it was written by Kenneth Almquist. "vnews" provides a"readnews"-like command interface, but displays articles using directscreen positioning. It appears to have been inspired, to some extent, bythe "notes" system (described below). "vnews" is currently distributedwith the standard 2.11 news source.A second, more versatile interface, "rn", was developed by Larry Wall (theauthor of Perl) and released in 1984. This interface also uses full-screendisplay with direct positioning, but it includes many other useful featuresand has been very popular with many regular net readers. The interfaceincludes reading, discarding, and/or processing of articles based onuser-definable patterns, and the ability of the user to develop customizedmacros for display and keyboard interaction. "rn" is currently at release4.4.4. It is being maintained by Stan Barber <sob@academ.com>. "rn" is notprovided with the standard news software release, but is very widelyavailable because of its popularity. The software can be obtained from itsofficial archive site, ftp.academ.com, using FTP. A description and somenews about it can be found on the WWW pagehttp://www.academ.com/academ/rn.html.Wayne Davison's "trn" is a superset of "rn". Trn adds the ability tofollow "threads of discussions" in newsgroups; its latest version 3.6 isbased on rn 4.4. It uses a Reference-line database to allow the user totake advantage of the "discussion tree" formed by an article and itsreplies. This results in a true reply-ordered reading of the articles,complete with a small ascii representation of the current article'sposition in the discussion tree. Trn is also capable of "menu-based"selection of articles, allows one to do useful things to operate on a setof selected newsgroups. Trn can be obtained from ftp.uu.net in the/networking/news/readers/trn/ directory, and from many other archiveservers world-wide.Slrn is a small NNTP-based newsreader for Unix systems, written by JohnE. Davis <davis@space.mit.edu>. It uses the NOV database, providesthread-based access to the articles, and runs quickly and compactly, inthe face of large numbers of articles in large numbers of newsgroups.It provides a "scoring" facility, allowing you to define what kinds ofarticles you are or are not interested in in terms of their headers(capable of doing many of the jobs of rn's killfiles). It is available from<URL:ftp:space.mit.edu/pub/davis/slrn/>.xrn is an X11-based interface to NNTP that was originally written by RickSpickelmier and Ellen Sentovich (UC Berkeley). Jonathan Kamens (OpenVisionTechnologies, Inc.) is the author and maintainer of the current version(8.02), available by anonymous ftp from ftp.x.org in/contrib/applications/xrn. xrn supports many features, including sortingby subject, user-settable key bindings, graceful handling of NNTP servercrashes, and many of the features of rn (including KILL files and keybindings similar to rn).Another X11-based newsreader is xvnews, written by Dan Currie, currentlymaintained by Hans de Graaff <J.J.deGraaff@twi.tudelft.nl>. xvnews is anOPENLook newsreader written primarily for Sun workstations runningOpenWindows, but it will run on any X workstation which has the XViewlibraries. It works with NNTP only, and is compatible with rn stylecommands. The current version is 2.2.1 and is available from its archivesite ftp.twi.tudelft.nl in the /pub/news directory.There are two macro packages named "Gnus" (formerly "GNUS") and "Gnews"that can be used with the GNU Emacs text editor. These allow reading,replying, and posting interaction with the news from inside the Emacs texteditor. In addition, Gnus now has mail-reading capabilities as well.Client code exists to get the articles using NNTP rather than from a localdisk. Copies can be found on most archive sites that carry the GNUarchives eg. ftp.cs.titech.ac.jp, archie.au, archive.eu.net,gatekeeper.dec.com, prep.ai.mit.edu. More information about the latestGnus version (5.1, included with emacs 19.30) can be found athttp://www.ifi.uio.no/~larsi/ding.html"nn" is yet another reader interface, developed by Kim F. Storm of TexasInstruments A/S, Denmark, and released in 1989. nn differs from thetraditional readnews and vnews by presenting a menu of article subject andsender-name lines, allowing you to preselect articles to read. nn uses NOVindex files for fast access to article header information. nn is nowmaintained by (Michael T Pins <mtpins@isca.uiowa.edu>. The current versionis 6.5.1 and the "official" ftp site is ftp.isca.uiowa.edu in theunix/nn directory.Yet another newsreader is the "tin" reader. It operates with threads,uses NOV-style index files if available, has different articleorganization methods, and is full-screen oriented. tin works on alocal news spool or over an NNTP connection. It has been posted toalt.sources; further information is available from www.tin.org. Thecurrent maintainer is Urs Janssen (urs@tin.org) and the currentrelease of tin is pre-1.4. Tin is based more on the Notes and tasssystems than "rn". There is an extensive list of features, includinginterfaces to batch modes and auto unpacking mechanisms. The officialftp site for tin is ftp.tin.org.Pine(tm) --a Program for Internet News & Email-- is a tool for reading,sending, and managing electronic messages. It was designed specificallywith novice computer users in mind, but can be tailored to accommodate theneeds of "power users" as well. Pine uses Internet news and mail messageprotocols and runs on Unix and PCs. Pine is copyrighted, but freelyavailable. The latest version, including source code, can be found onthe Internet host "ftp.cac.washington.edu" in the file "pine/pine.tar.Z"(accessible via anonymous FTP). To try Pine out from the Internet, youmay telnet to "demo.cac.washington.edu" and login as "pinedemo". Thereis also a Pine-specific Internet news group (comp.mail.pine). Forfurther information, send e-mail to pine@cac.washington.edu. Pine wasoriginally based on Elm, but there is little if any Elm code left. Pineis the work of Mike Seibel, Steve Hubert, Mark Crispin, Sheryl Erez,David Miller and Laurence Lundblade* at the University of WashingtonOffice of Computing and Communications. Pine and Pico are trademarks ofthe University of Washington. (* Laurence is now at Virginia Tech.)An NNTP newsreader for Macintoshs is available called HyperNews. It isimplemented as a HyperCard stack and depends on MacTCP. It is availablefrom many Mac archives, including ftp.apple.com andsumex-aim.stanford.edu.A newsreader preferred by many Macintosh users is NewsWatcher by byj-norstad@nwu.edu (John Norstad). The current version is 2.0b8 and isavailable in ftp.acns.nwu.edu:/pub/newswatcher.Nuntius is another newsreader for the Mac, written by Peter Speck<speck@ruc.dk>. It can be obtained from frederik.ruc.dk, or the Cornellmirror site ftp.cit.cornell.edu in /pub/mac/comm/test.There is also an NNTP-based netnews reader for Symbolics Lisp Machines(under Genera 7) available for anonymous FTP from ucbvax.berkeley.edu[128.32.133.1] in pub/nntp-clients/lispm written by Ian Connolly<connolly@coins.cs.umass.edu> and maintained by Richard Welty<welty@lewis.crd.ge.com>. In addition, another NNTP-based newsbrowser is available running under Genera 7 and Genera 8. It providesmouse driven hierarchic browsing of newsgroups and articles, withsupport for X11 servers on remote machines. It is available foranonymous FTP on flash.bellcore.com [128.96.32.20] in the directorypub/lispm/news-reader/. It is written and maintained by PeterClitherow <pc@bellcore.com>A TOPS-20 reader was developed by Dave Edwards of SRI<dle@kl.sri.com>, but current availability is unknown. An NNTP readersuite for PC's running MS-DOS and having Excelan boards is availablefor ftp from ames.arc.nasa.gov; get the pcrrn files. There are twoMS-DOS news readers that can be obtained from bcm.tmc.edu in the "nfs"directory. They both require PC-NFS (from Sun) to work. They willboth work under PC/TCP from FTP Software early this year. Source willbe provided at that time."trumpet" is a NNTP based news reader for DOS and Windows. There is LanWorkplace version which is also available. It runs over packet drivers,which can work side-by-side with a Novell Network. For information onthe Crynwr Packet Driver Collection, send mail to <info@crynwr.com> orsend a FAX to +1-315-268-9201. Trumpet offers a very intuitive interfacewith most of the basic facilities required in a newsreader (but withoutsome of the 'bells and whistles found in something like rn). It hasfacilities for using SMTP to forward/reply etc. The latest version is1.07 and is shareware available at most main ftp sites.trumpet ftp.trumpet.com.au:/dostrump/wintrumpet ftp.trumpet.com.au:/wintrump/"WinVN" is a public domain NNTP newsreader for Microsoft Windows andWindows NT. There are versions available for WINSOCK, Novell LWP, andDEC Pathworks/LanMan. It supports the XOVER extension, and can displayarticles in thread trees. SMTP and MAPI outgoing mail are supported.The latest version is 0.99.2. Sources and binaries are always availablefrom:ftp.ksc.nasa.gov:[.pub.win3.winvn].ftp://ripem.msu.edu/pub/pc/win/winvn/ (mirror).Details on several newsreaders for systems running "Waffle" may befound in the FAQ posted to the comp.bbs.waffle newsgroup on a regularbasis. At least 8 different readers are available, and all can beobtained via ftp and mailserver from ftp.halcyon.com (look in/pub/waffle/news). <ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/comp.bbs.waffle/faq>Details on many other mail and news readers for MSDOS, Windows and OS/2systems can be found in the FAQ posted to comp.os.msdos.mail-news. <ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/comp.os.msdos.mail-news/intro> <ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/comp.os.msdos.mail-news/software>At least one IBM VM/SP (CMS) version of the Usenet software isavailable. It is known as PSU NetNews, and it is maintained by LindaLittleton (lrl@psuvm.bitnet/psuvm.psu.edu). Version 2.4 of thesoftware is available from LISTSERV@PSUVM. PSU NetNews supports only3270 terminals, and uses XEDIT as its screen driver. Most major VMsites appear to use this package. NetNews supports locally-storednews, not NNTP reading.Since January 1993, a complete NNTP server is available for VM systems.It provides news reading, posting and feed processing compatible to theUnix NNTP implementations. The code is written in IBM's VM Rexx.It assumes that you already have installed PSU VM NETNEWS. The VM NNTPpackage, written by Kris Van Hees (gutest6@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be) who alsotakes care of the maintenance. The current version is 1.0.1 and requiresIBM's FAL TCP/IP and Arty Ecock's RXSOCKET which is available from theIBMTCP FIELLIST on listserv@pucc. The VM NNTP package can be obtainedfrom the NNTP PACKAGE on listserv@blekul11.There is NNTP support for PSU NetNews for bulk news receipt: NNTPXFERwill poll another site for news, and NNTPRCVR will receive news sentfrom a Unix NNTPXMIT process. Either program sends the news articlesto NetNews for processing. Contact Andy Hooper (hooper@qucdn.bitnetor qucdn.queensu.ca) for more information, or obtain them fromlistserv@qucdn in PUBLIC FILELIST. These programs are provided withsource, and require IBM's FAL TCP/IP and Pascal. An NNTPXMIT senderthat works in cooperation with PSU NETNEWS is available from HermanVan Uytven (SYSTHVU@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be).There is at least one NNTP news-reader for VM using XEDIT as itsscreen manager: NNR. Contact Paul Campbell (pc@mbunix.mitre.org) forinformation. The program requires IBM's FAL TCP/IP. The software isavailable for anonymous ftp from ftp.uni-stuttgart.dein the directory pub/comm/news/beginner/software/nnr/*.An NNTP news reader is available for TSO/ISPF, called NNMVS. NNMVS iswritten by Steve Bacher <seb@draper.com> at Draper Laboratory. Itrequires C/370 V1R2 or SAS/C; ISPF V2; and TCP/IP for MVS (eitherIBM's "FAL" or SNS). It is now available via anonymous ftp atftp.uni-stuttgart.de under the directory/pub/comm/news/beginner/software/nnmvs and from ftp.mic.ucla.edu,directory /pub/mvs/netnews. The current version is Version 3Release 2. There's also an object-code-only distribution for folkswithout C compilers, but that's an at-your-own-risk distribution,and requires the IBM C/370 run-time library. The source codedistribution can be compiled with either C/370 or SAS/C.Newsfeed management software------------------------Gup, the Group Update Program is a Unix mail-server program that lets aremote site change their newsgroups subscription on their news feedwithout requiring the intervention of the news administrator at the feedsite. Gup operates with the INN (and likely the C News) batchingmechanisms. The news administrators at the remote sites simply mailcommands to gup to make changes to their own site's subscription list.The mail/interface is password protected. Gup checks the requests forvalid newsgroup names, patterns that have no effect and so on. Gup'sauthors are Mark Delany <markd@mira.net.au> and Andrew Herbert<andrew@mira.net.au>. Its official ftp location isftp://ftp.mira.net.au/unix/news/, but since that's notas well connected as uunet, people are strongly advised to obtain it froma mirror site. eg. ftp.uu.net:/networking/news/misc/gup-0.4.tar.gzdynafeed is a package from Looking Glass Software Limited that maintains a.newsrc for every remote site and generates the batches for them. Remotesites can use uucp or run a program to change their .newsrc dynamically. Itcomes with a program that the remote site can run to monitor readership innewsgroups and dynamically update the feed list to match reader interest.The goal of this is to get a feed that sends only exactly the groupscurrently being read. dynafeed can be obtained from ftp.clarinet.com assources/dynafeed.tar.Z.News processing software------------------------Software also exists to automatically archive Usenet newsgroups. The packagerkive, written by Kent Landfield <kent@sterling.com> can be configured toarchive news automatically based on different headers -- Archive-Name,Volume-Issue, Chronological, Subject and External-Command to name a few. Itcan be run in batch mode from the command line or from cron. It can also beinstalled in the sys/newsfeeds file to process articles as they arereceived. rkive supports local spool directories as well as NNTP basedaccess. rkive is available via ftp from ftp.sterling.com in the directory/rkive.Newsclip is a programming language for writing news filtering programs, fromLooking Glass Software Limited, marketed by ClariNet Communications Corp. Itis C-like, and translates to C, so a C compiler is required. It hasdata-types to represent the kinds of things found in article headers andbodies. It can maintain databases of users, message-ids, patterns,subjects, etc. These can be used to decide whether to ignore or select anarticle. Newsclip can either operate as a standalone program or as part ofrn. It is free for non-commercial use and is available from ftp.clarinet.comas sources/nc.tar.Z. Contact clari-info@clarinet.com witha subject line of "newsclip" for more info.Commercial software-------------------DNEWS is a commercial product from NetWin. DNEWS licenses are providedfree to educational institutions for non profit use. With DNEWS, the newsis stored in a database so as not to overload the raw file system. DNEWSsupports 'sucking' where only groups which users read are pulled over fromthe feeder site. DNEWS is currently known to run on VMS, Windows NT,Solaris, SunOS, Unixware, HP/UX. DNEWS binaries are available byanonymous ftp from ftp.std.com in /ftp/vendors/netwin/dnewsor from http://world.std.com/~netwin/DNEWS sources can be obtained on request, see the file source.txt in theftp area for more information.Special note on "notes" and old versions of news------------------------------------------------Many years ago, there was another distributed "news" system called"notes". The "notes" software package used a different internalorganization of articles, and a different interchange format than thatof the standard Usenet software. It was inspired by the notesfilesavailable in the PLATO system and was developed independently from theUsenet news. Eventually, the "notes" network and Usenet were joinedvia gateways doing (sometimes imperfect) protocol translation."notes" was written in 1980-1981 by Ray Essick and Rob Kolstad, (then)grad students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Thefirst public release of "notes" was at the January 1982 Usenixconference. The last release of notes was version 1.7; it is nolonger being actively maintained and the newsgroup for discussingit (news.software.notes) was removed in April 1995."B" news software is currently considered obsolete. Unix sitesjoining the Usenet should install C news or INN to ensure properbehavior and good performance. Most old B news software hadcompiled-in limits on the number of newsgroups and the number ofarticles per newsgroup; the increasing volume of news means that Bnews software cannot reliably cope with a moderately-full newsfeed.Software versions & availability--------------------------------You can obtain the version number of your news software by issuingsome form of "v" command to show the current version -- consult theman page for details. Current software is obtainable from almost anymajor Usenet site as well as the sites noted in the body of thearticle, above.The following sites probably have sources to the current news softwareavailable for anyone needing a copy: Site Contact ---- ------- munnari kre@munnari.oz.au osu-cis postmaster@cis.ohio-state.edu philabs usenet@philabs.philips.com pyramid usenet@pyramid.com rutgers usenet@rutgers.edu tektronix news@tektronix.tek.com watmath usenet@watmath.waterloo.edu uunet info@uunet.uu.netSources for most of the news readers and software, including news2.11, C News, "rn", and "trn" are also available in thecomp.sources.unix archives. European sites should request the sourcesfrom their nearest backbone site.The "archie" service can be used to locate ftp archives containingvarious news software packages. There are regular postings in thecomp.answers newsgroup about how to use the "archie" service.For a relatively low price, you can buy one of many CD-ROM distributionsof freely-redistributable software. This may be cheaper than along-distance phone call.Standards---------News programs communicate with each other according to standardprotocols, some of which are described by RFCs. An RFC is a Request ForComment, a de facto standard in the Internet Community. It is a form ofsoftware standard, published by the Internet Network Information Center(InterNIC). Copies of RFCs are often posted to the net and obtainablefrom archive sites. Current news-related RFCs include the following: RFC 822 specifies the format of messages; RFC 1036 uses this. RFC 977 specifies NNTP, the Network News Transfer Protocol. RFC 1036 specifies the format of Usenet articles. RFC 1123 amends RFC 822. RFC 1153 specifies the digest format some moderated groups use.See the accompanying posting "How to Get Information about Networks"for instructions on getting copies of the RFCs.Henry Spencer has a draft of a successor to RFC1036 that attempts todocument and explain all subsequent enhancements and existing practice asimplemented in the newer news systems. This draft (often calledson-of-1036) can be obtained by anonymous ftp from ftp.zoo.toronto.edu as/pub/news.txt.Z (the text version) or /pub/news.ps.Z (a PostScriptversion). Son-of-1036 is intended to be stand-alone reading and does notrequire that one also read RFCs 822 or 1123.Newsgroups----------The following newsgroups cover issues discussed in this article, and canbe consulted for recent developments.bit.listserv.netnws-l Discussion about NetNews on VM systems.gnu.emacs.gnews News reading under GNU Emacs using Weemba's Gnews.gnu.emacs.gnus News reading under GNU Emacs using GNUS (in English).news.software.anu-news VMS B-news software from Australian National Univ.news.software.b Discussion about B-news-compatible software.news.software.nn Discussion about the "nn" news reader package.news.software.readers General discussion about news reading software.news.software.nntp The Network News Transfer Protocol.comp.os.msdos.mail-news Administering mail & network news systems under MS-DOS.comp.protocols.tcp-ip TCP and IP network protocols.comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc TCP/IP for IBM(-like) personal computers.alt.usenet.offline-reader Packages for reading mail/news off-line.The following periodic postings in the news.software.b and news.answersnewsgroups are useful for people interested in news transport software.Mark Linimon "News.software.b: Introduction to news.software.b"Mark Linimon "News.software.b Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)"Mark Linimon "C News Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)"Rob Robertson "FAQ: Overview database / NOV General Information"Heiko W.Rupp "INN FAQ Part 1/5: General Information"Heiko W.Rupp "INN FAQ Part 2/5: Debugging & Configuring Information"Heiko W.Rupp "INN FAQ Part 3/5: Operating Guide & Tutorial"Heiko W.Rupp "INN FAQ Part 4/5: Appendix A: Norman's install guide"Heiko W.Rupp "INN FAQ Part 5/5: Appendix B: Configurations for certain systems"The following FAQ is posted periodically to news.software.anu-newsand news.answers.Bob Sloane "FAQ: news.software.anu-news"Users on MS-DOS machines should take a look at the FAQ posted periodicallyto comp.os.msdos.mail-news.Russell Schulz "comp.os.msdos.mail-news FAQ (01/02) intro"Russell Schulz "comp.os.msdos.mail-news FAQ (02/02) software"The following FAQs posted to alt.usenet.offline-reader and news.answersare useful for people interested in off-line news readers.Russell Schulz "alt.usenet.offline-reader FAQ (01/02) intro"Russell Schulz "alt.usenet.offline-reader FAQ (02/02) software"Mike Northam "alt.usenet.offline-reader: YAFAQ (Yet Another FAQ)"Acknowledgements----------------The preparation of this article (and Usenet itself!) was greatlyenhanced by the contributions and assistance of the following persons:Steve Bellovin, Ray Essick, Mark Horton, Brian Kantor, Phil Lapsley,Bob Page, Rich Salz, Tom Truscott, and Larry Wall. Thanks, folks. Rate this FAQ N/A Worst Weak OK Good Great Vote Related questions and answers [ Usenet FAQs | Search | Web FAQs | Documents | RFC Index ] Send corrections/additions to the FAQ Maintainer: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)Last Update January 09 2009 @ 00:14 AM© 2008 FAQS.ORG. All rights reserved. var gaJsHost = (('https:' == document.location.protocol) ? 'https://ssl.' : 'http://www.');document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src="http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/software/part1//" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker('UA-892232-19');pageTracker._trackPageview();
 

Short

essay

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development

of

Usenet

architecture.

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/software/part1/

Usenet Software: History and Sources 2009 January

dvd rental

dvd


Short essay on the development of Usenet architecture.

Rules

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