Managing Usenet - Softcover

Spencer, Henry; Lawrence, David

2.67

6 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1565921984 ISBN 13: 9781565921986

Publisher: Oreilly & Associates Inc, 1998

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Usenet, also called Netnews, is the world's largest discussion forum and it is doubling in size every year. There are Usenet discussion groups on every imaginable topic, from the technical and scientific, to the political and religious, and onto the truly bizarre and arcane. If you simply use the Netnews system, all of this discussion can be interesting and entertaining. But if you're a system administrator who has to set up and run a Netnews system, you suddenly have the unenviable task of making sure that your system can handle a data flow of thousands of megabytes per day. Unfortunately, Usenet administration is one area of network administration that is still learned primarily by word-of-mouth and Internet folklore. That is, until now.This book, written by two of the foremost authorities on Usenet administration, is full of practical information about how to set up and run a news system. Managing Usenet covers C News and INN, the two most widely used news relayers on UNIX systems. It explains the basics of starting a Netnews system, from getting a news feed, to building and installing the news software, to keeping everything running smoothly. Managing Usenet also offers guidelines to help you make sure that your system is capable of handling news volume today and in the future. This book contains everything you need to know to administer a Netnews system, from a single news server inside your organization to a complicated system with multiple servers, several incoming news feeds, and outgoing feeds to a number of other hosts as well.

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Review:

Usenet and newsgroups may seem simple to the casual observer, but system administrators who have to manage Usenet on their system or run a newsgroup know otherwise. Spencer and Lawrence share information that previously had to be learned online, providing system administrators with a detailed guide to Usenet management. They tell you how to choose between C News and INN, the two major contenders for Usenet software. Then they show you how set your software up and make your daily operations as trouble-free as possible.

The book not only presents administration tasks, but also helps you plan for the future, which is critical since the volume of Usenet communication doubles yearly. Besides the technical aspects, Spencer and Lawrence discuss the social and political sides of being a Usenet manager. They provide tips on how to interact with the rest of Usenet, how to handle irresponsible or illegal posts, and the fine points of moderating a newsgroup. Hint: reading the "What's in the Book" section will help you determine which chapters and sections you'll want to read right away and which are of less immediate interest. --Elizabeth Lewis

About the Author:

Henry Spencer got his BSc at the University of Saskatchewan and his MSc at the University of Toronto. He worked as a UNIX systems programmer at the University of Toronto for a number of years before becoming an independent consultant and author. Henry ran the first Usenet site in Canada (and the first outside the US), which was part of the Usenet "backbone" in its early days. He and Geoff Collyer wrote C News, one of the two major software packages for network news transport and storage. Henry worked on a first draft of the replacement for RFC 1036, which defines the format and protocols of network news. He was involved in the early definition of CANet (the Canadian national research network) and was primary speaker at the Workshop On NetNews of the RNP (Brazil's National Research Network) in Rio de Janeiro in August 1992, as a United Nations technical consultant. Henry is also a founding member and past board member of the Canadian Space Society, a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society, and an occasional consultant to the Canadian Space Agency. He was head of mission planning for the now-dormant Canadian Solar Sail Project. David Lawrence has been the moderator of news.announce.newgroups, the clearinghouse for the creation of new mainstream newsgroups, since February 1991. He first gained access to Usenet and the Internet in 1986, and by 1988 he was the administrator of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's news server, an influential hub for dozens of Usenet sites. In 1992, he moved to northern Virginia to become the news system administrator for UUNET Technologies for five years. He recently took a position with the Internet Software Consortium, where he can concentrate on programming freely available software for the Internet community. His current administrative duties for Usenet include maintenance of the mainstream newsgroup namespace and management of the worldwide database of newsgroup moderators. Outside of work, David's passions include motorcycling (he has chosen not to own a car for the past eight years), inline skating, volleyball, alpine skiing, and hiking. He particularly likes endurance activities, such as commuting twelve miles each way on Rollerblades, skiing the entire time the slopes are open, and being entered in the 1997 Iron Butt Rally, a motorcycling challenge of 11,000 miles in 11 days. David married Diane Horan in May 1997 and then returned to living in the forested mountains of the northeastern United States, settling down to start their family in northern Vermont.

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