I have decided that these three files would become near-prerequisites for
installing release 1.4. Which means that it will still work WITHOUT those
files, but you will get a warning message when LISTSERV is started and also
once per day (I've installed a WAKEUP PARMS facility).
Reasons for making this mandatory:
- I went to great pains to include tests in the mailing routines to suppress
loops on rejection mail by using XMAILER NAMES and DOMAIN NAMES. I would
hate to get angry complaints from users about my LISTSERV entering a loop
which could have been avoided if these files had been available.
- I like the extended stats with network load indication... They are very use-
ful for deciding whether a given peer has too much load or not.
- I plan to automatize list management. With more than 3 peers it becomes a
pain to add/remove users. I will need the BITEARN NODES database to deter-
mine nearest server, etc.
- I have added full support for the :fformat, :fclass and :msgs tags. If you
are at a JESx node and cannot receive nor send messages, you will be awfully
glad to get them into a mailfile instead of 'sending commands in the dark-
ness'. This requires the BITEARN NODES too.
*** IMPORTANT NOTE ***
This does NOT mean that your LISTSERV is going to eat 1 hour of CPU for each
command just because it scans the BITEARN NODES. There is a LSVBITGN exec
that you must run once a month to create a 40kb BITEARN NODESUM file which is
then used to get the info. Also, the values are kept in GLOBALV vars. I belie
ve that version 1.4 will be much faster than 1.3, considering the other impro
vements I have made to the code -- and this will be particularly true under
SP4.
The three files I mentioned must therefore be made available to LISTSERV, in
R/O mode. You could, for example, give LISTSERV a link to MAILER 191 for the
XMAILER and DOMAIN NAMES. If you do not have BITEARN NODES on a public disk
already, I suggest that you create one or that you put it on a system disk
(eg MAINT 319). LISTSERV should have a LINK to it in its directory, and you
should modify the PROFILE to ACCESS it accordingly.
Please skip the rest of this mail if you are familiar with Netserv.
You can order the mailer stuff from NICSERVE *or* Netserv. I would suggest
you use the latter since it has an automatic-distribution feature. BITEARN
NODES is available from NICSERVE too, but the version you'd get from it would
be at best 3 months old, so *please* use Netserv. If you never retrieved the
BITEARN NODES file in your life, here's what you should do:
1) Determine the userid of the contact person for your node. A possible way is
issuing a TELL NETSERV AT BITNIC GET NODENTRY your_nodeid. The contact per-
son appears in the ":contact" field of the reply.
2) Logon to this account, and issue the following commands:
TELL netserv GET BITEARN NODES
TELL netserv GET UPDNODES EXEC
TELL netserv GET UPDNODES MODULE
TELL netserv AFD ADD password * NODUPD
TELL netserv AFD ADD password XMAILER NAMES
TELL netserv AFD ADD password DOMAIN NAMES
where netserv = 'NETSERV AT BITNIC' for BITNET
'NETSERV AT CANADA01' for NetNorth
password = - either you've changed it and you know what it is :-)
- otherwise it's your userid, and you'd better change it!
Important note: just because you're nearer to CANADA01 than to BITNIC does
*not* mean that you can use it. If you're in the United States of America,
then you must use the server of the United States of America, period :-(
3) Go to the coffee machine, watch TV, give a phone call to your girlfriend,
or do any suitable action that will take at least 3 hours to execute ;-)
Then come back to your terminal. Actually it was a "repeat (3); until files
arrived"...
4) You can then install the stuff. You will get new versions of the xxx NAMES
monthly, and a VERSyymm NODUPD file. You will have to run UPDNODES to update
your BITEARN NODES file with this NODUPD, each month.
Sorry for the length of this, but it will probably save me a lot of private
mail :-)
Eric
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