Re: [leafnode-list] Idea: Aliases for sender

[Mark Brown <broonie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Sep 29, 2000 at 10:30:08AM -0500, Timothy A. McDaniel wrote:

> It looks like my new Debian 2.2 distro has no trn, just slrn, so if

It's in the non-free archive because the license prevents commercial
redistribution for profit.

> anyone has advice on resetting From: there, please e-mail me privately
> at tmcd@xxxxxxxxx  (Tangent: anyone who knows how I can get a Debian

Just include a From: header in your posting when you're writing.  I'd be
rather surprised if the same thing didn't work with trn.

> package with pine, please e-mail me privately too.  And anyone who can

There's source packages in non-free (there's a -src and a -diff package
- download both and follow the instructions in whichever one contains
the instructions).  There's no binary package because it's illegal to
distribute modified binaries of Pine.

> explain why leafnode immediately started downloading the active
> newsgroups file when I did "pon", and how I can make it do leafnode
> transfers only when *I* initiate it manually.  I panicked when I saw
> the modem lines start to blink -- "what the hell is taking over my
> computer?!?  is someone hacking in instantly?!?".  -- I don't like new
> installs, and Debian seems less friendly than most.)

The Debian package does that.  One of the options when configuring it
is:

| Description: What type of network connection do you have?
|  The scripts provided with the package support two kinds of network
|  connection: a permanent one and one provided by PPP.  When set up for
|  PPP the package will download news every time a PPP connection is
|  established.  With a permanent connection news will be downloaded
|  daily.  Either option will work if you are using diald to manage a PPP
|  connecton.

In response to this you selected PPP, which is the default.  The package
is targetted at naive users, with the idea being that you should be able
to install it and have it Just Work.  Having to manually invoke
fetchnews wouldn't really satisfy that.

That said, not having it download automatically is also a reasonable
thing to want to do.  I'm just adding another option to that
configuration option to disable automatic downloads.  It should be in
the unstable distribution tomorrow or Sunday.  In the meantime (or if you
don't want to start installing packages from unstable), change the
network option in /etc/news/leafnode/debian-config to something other
than PPP or permanant.  Now that you've mentioned it I'm surprised
nobody's suggested it before.

If you notice other things like this with Debian it would be really
helpful if you could report them to the maintainers.  The "bug" and
"reportbug" packages provide correspondingly named programs which
generate and submit appropriately formatted reports.

> In short, I naively expected that my current case is the most common
> case.  What do other people do, then?

It probably is the most common case, it's just that it's addressed
in the client.  Putting rewriting code in the server requires far more
effort (if it's going to do it right the server has to be able to parse 
the header).

I think every newsreader I've used except Pine allows the user to specify
whatever they like in the From: header.  login@hostname is just the best
guess they can make if you don't tell them anything.

-- 
Mark Brown  mailto:broonie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx   (Trying to avoid grumpiness)
            http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~broonie/
EUFS        http://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/filmsoc/


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