AAPT Home > Support Information > News Configuration > Newsfeed Administration
There is no definitive answer for this, it varies from site to site and depends on a lot of factors that you have to decide on. Influencing factors are generally:
This is not within AAPT's control and we cannot decide these issues for you. You must make these decisions according to the requirements of your workplace or customers.
For information about configuring your news server, see the documentation for the news server you are using.
Group Update Program, GUP, written by Mark Delaney and Andrew Herbert from Mira Networking, Australia, is a program that enables you to update your newsfeed automatically via e-mail.
Send commands in plain text only to GUP@connect.com.au. GUP processes commands in order and each command is processed completely before GUP moves on to the next command. Please note that GUP sends all responses to the e-mail address of the news administrator listed in the config file for that site. If someone other than the news administrator sends a command, GUP does not respond to the person who sent the mail. The only exception is the help command which does not require a site name and password and replies to the person who sent the request.
GUP accepts the following commands:
| Command | Syntax | Notes |
| site | site <sitename> <password> | Where sitename must be a valid site registered in the GUP config file. You are provided with your sitename and password when your news account is set up. This command allows you access to your newsfeed and must come before any other command except help. |
| include | include <pattern*> | Used to add groups to your newsfeed. For example,
will add all comp newsgroups to your newsfeed. | exclude | exclude <pattern*> | Used to exclude a specific group or groups from a collection of included newsgroups. For example,
will add all rec.food newsgroups to your newsfeed, except the one discussing chocolate. |
| delete | delete <pattern*> | Removes all newsgroups matching the pattern from the newsfeed. For example,
will remove all alt.binaries newsgroups from your newsfeed. |
| help | help | Send this command on its own to receive a short help file providing information on the syntax and usage of the commands. |
| list | list | Lists all commands that have been sent to gup enabling you to track all changes to your newsfeed. |
| newsgroups | newsgroups <pattern*> | Lists all newsgroups that match the pattern. Newsgroups matching the pattern that are in your current newsfeed have the word Yes following the newsgroup name and those not currently in your newsfeed have the word No following the newsgroup name. |
| quit | Completes your series of GUP commands and stops GUP parsing the rest of the mail article which may include superfluous information such as signatures. |
[Link from all references to pattern]
* Pattern is the name(s), or part of the name(s), of the newsgroup(s) you
wish to refer to.
For example to subscribe to all comp.sys groups except comp.sys.weirdosystems use the command
include comp.sys.*
exclude comp.sys.weirdosystems
The pattern is matched against the active file which is the GUP file containing information about which groups you are currently receiving in your newsfeed.
AAPT provides a full news feed but your site's news administrator may elect to subscribe to only a few groups relevant to your organisation. If you wish to subscribe to a newsgroup that is not available at your site, please discuss this with your local news administrator.
AAPT adds any newsgroup under the seven major Usenet categories that has been approved by a recognised authority. Note that, just as for the rest of the Internet, while there are no official authorities for news, there are a number of unofficially recognised ones, most notably David Laurence (tale@uu.uunet.net) from UUNET. Groups authorised by David Laurence are added automatically.
For more information about the official Usenet process, see the How to Become a Usenet site article which is posted regularly on news.announce.newusers. To avoid false requests for creating and removing newsgroups AAPT has implemented the PGP signed group controls described at ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/news/misc/pgpcontrol/README.html
Groups in alt.* and other hierarchies will be added on request providing they show traffic. If you wish to request a newsgroup be added, contact newsmaster@connect.com.au
News administrators can also create site-specific newsgroups. Refer to your own news server's documentation for information on how to do this.
If you have a general question about our news service that has not been answered here, speak to your account manager.
If you have a technical problem that is not answered here please check your log files, the manual for your news server, and any FAQs before contacting us. You will be surprised what you will find. News is very rarely silent about problems. If you think the problem is at AAPT's end, contact newsmaster@connect.com.au. Please provide as much detail as possible to expedite resolution of your problem.
We request that you do not go directly to the technical staff. Report problems via the appropriate channels, either through Support or via newsmaster@connect.com.au. Problems reported this way are logged and tracked to resolution and this enables us to distribute the workload for our technical staff who are working hard to make things better for our customers.
"Managing UUCP and Usenet" by Tim O'Reilly and Grace Todino, published by O'Reilly and Associates. ISBN 0-937175-93-5.
Dave Barr's INN page ( http://www.visi.com/~barr/INN.html): A good starting point for INN resources.
DNEWS Server Home Page - DNews is a commercial news server that runs on a number of platforms including MS-Windows NT, Solaris, and VMS. A number of our customers use it. Worth checking on as DNews introduces some terminology that can be confusing.
Internet Software Consortium - Maintainers of INN and BIND. Links to INN page. Also supports work on innfeed and similar contributions.
news.software.b - Discussion of B-News software. Extremely low traffic.
news.software.nntp - Great resource. Low noise. Tends to be a lot of people looking for answers, but also lots of earnest discussion. Most of the news software FAQs and product announcements make it to this group.
RFC 977 - Network News Transport Protocol (ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc977.txt)
RFC 1036 - Standard for Interchange of Usenet Articles (ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1036.txt)
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