Eileen I went through the same concerns you are now experiencing last December when I provided a gateway between my electronic discussion list (AUTOCAT@UBVM) and Usenet. (Cross-posting, by the way, refers to the practice of sending the same message to multiple lists; it is different from the automatic forwarding of all messages posted to a single list to a Usenet newsreader). Anyway, here is a file called LSVOWNER GATEWAY that was provided to me when I asked for guidance. It sets out the steps to be followed. They worked for me and I knew just about as little as you claim to about Usenet and newsreaders. Good luck, and let me know if I can be of further help. Judith Hopkins Technical Services Research and Analysis Officer Central Technical Services Lockwood Library Building State University of New York at Buffalo Buffalo, NY 14260-2200 Phone: (716) 645-2796 FAX: (716) 645-5955 BITNET: [log in to unmask] INTERNET: [log in to unmask] Listowner: AUTOCAT@UBVM / [log in to unmask] ************************************************************************* From: [log in to unmask] (Jim McIntosh) Newsgroups: bit.admin Subject: Gateway Policy Date: 2 Jan 92 22:54:36 GMT +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | This document, and the other documents I post here regularly are | | eligible for automatic distribution (AFD) from LISTSERV@AUVM and | | are also available for anonymous ftp from auvm.american.edu. | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ ******************************************************** *** General Information on Listserv/Netnews gateways *** ******************************************************** This document gives general information on bi-directional (or optionally uni-directional) gateways between Listserv and Netnews as implemented in Netnews version 2.4 by Linda Littleton at Penn State University. It includes guidelines on how to establish a new Listserv/Netnews gateway. *** What is Listserv? Listserv, which stands for List Server, is a mail list server that runs on VM/CMS. It provides "mail-exploding" capabilities so that people with a common interest can communicate with each other by sending mail to a particular address (one address per Listserv list), which then redistributes the mail to each person "subscribed" to the list. Each person subscribed to a particular list gets a copy of each piece of mail in their mailbox. *** What is Netnews? Netnews is a bulletin board system in which articles on a variety of topics are arranged in "newsgroups" and stored in a shared location from which individual users can read them. These newsgroups can be local newsgroups, available only at a user's site, or may be shared with other sites to form a world-wide bulletin board system called Usenet. *** What does the gateway do? The gateway software (which is a built-in part of the VM/CMS Netnews server from Penn State) puts each piece of Listserv mail for a particular list into a corresponding Netnews newsgroup and also sends each Netnews-originating posting to the newsgroup back to the Listserv list. On a per-group basis, the gateway can be either bi-directional or can be uni-directional in either direction. Generally Listserv groups on Netnews are given the name bit.listserv.<listname>. When appropriate, the items in a Listserv list might also be cross-posted to a "mainstream" Usenet group. *** Why have a gateway? The major reason sites decide to carry gatewayed Listserv lists is so their users can read these lists via shared disks, rather than requiring each user to receive each item to their mailbox. In addition, the gateway gives greater exposure and wider readership to the list since the list can be now be read by users at hundreds of Usenet sites. *** The gateway can be LOCAL or GLOBAL On a per-group basis, the gateway can be either LOCAL (only users on the machine where Netnews is running will see the Listserv items) or GLOBAL (the Listserv items will propagate to other Usenet sites). To avoid problems that can be caused by multiple sites gatewaying the same group, we request that only a handful of sites set up global gateways and that other sites receive these groups through their normal news feeds. If you feel it would be appropriate for your site to be an additional global gateway site, then write to [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask] to explain the situation. ******************************* *** AN IMPORTANT PRECAUTION *** ******************************* It is important that no more than one site per list set up a GLOBAL gateway. If more than one site does a GLOBAL gateway for a particular list, the list will get duplicates of some articles. It is the list owner's responsibility to make sure there are not multiple global gateways for the list and to "signoff" any suspect gateway site should duplicates start to occur. In the event that two sites did set up a global gateway for the same list, here is what might happen. If a user anywhere on the net posted an article to the group via Netnews and the article found its way to both of the global gateway sites, both of these sites would forward the article back to the Listserv list. The Listserv list would therefore receive two copies and since Listserv does not check message-id's for duplicates, it would redistribute both copies to everyone on the list. Netnews would not have a problem handling this (since it checks message-id's for duplicates), but it is the people who get the items to their mailboxes who would see two copies of the article. *** Gateway registration In order to avoid problems caused by multiple gateways, a "gateway registration service" is maintained by [log in to unmask], which keeps track of which site is doing global gateways for which which groups. A list of these global gateways, their corresponding Listserv lists and Usenet newsgroups, and the sites which are acting as global gateways is available from [log in to unmask] Send the command GET NETGATE GATELIST to get a copy of all registered gateways. This file is also available via anonymous ftp from auvm.american.edu. *** Setting up the gateway. The gateway is set up by having the Netnews service machine subscribe to the Listserv list in the same way that a subscriber would, but with the addition of setting Listserv options FULLHDR (so that message-ids are put on messages) and NOFILES (so that non-mail files are not sent). *** Guidelines for establishing a Listserv/Netnews gateway. It is the responsibility of the person requesting the gateway to do the following: 1. Get the approval of the Listserv list owner(s) and the Listserv administrator at the host node. Send them each a copy of this document. If the list owner or Listserv host administrator objects, the gateway is not done. 2. Get the approval of the Listserv list readers. This could be done somewhat informally by posting to the list and asking if there are objections. If the issue was controversial, a formal vote should be held according to the same guidelines as for creating a new Usenet group. If there was no major dissenting opinion a vote will not be needed. 3. If there is a Usenet group where crossposting would be logical, get the approval of the people who read that group (in the same way as approval of the Listserv readers was gotten). 4. Post to bit.admin to see if there are any objections. The subject of the posting should be "Gateway for <listname> under discussion". Explain briefly what the list is for. If you are proposing that the list be gated to something besides "bit.listserv.<listname>", this should be stated. Again, if there was no major dissenting opinion within seven days, a vote would not be needed; otherwise a vote would be held. Steps 2, 3, and 4 can all be done at the same time. 5. Write to [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask] to say that all of the criteria have been met. Indicate the gateway site (if you wish some site besides auvm.american.edu to be the gateway), Listserv list name, Listserv host node, list owner(s), and a short (45 character maximum) description of the list. News-admin will establish and/or register the gateway, and then post to bit.admin to say that the gateway is operational. The subject of the posting will be "Gateway for <listname> operational". If for some reason you cannot follow the steps outlined here (for example, if you do not get the bit groups, so cannot post to bit.admin), write to [log in to unmask] to explain the situation. *** Where to address questions Questions about Listserv/Netnews gateways can be posted to bit.admin or sent to [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]