misc/spool

[usenet]

>From mark ...

This package of two shell scripts allows you to send outgoing news in batches
rather than as it comes through.  By controlling the batches, you can
implement a policy such as "mail goes through at once, but news only
goes out during non-working hours".  The disadvantage is that news takes
longer to propagate, so unless you have system load or phone bill problems,
you probably don't want to use this.

Basically, there are two shell scripts.  /usr/lib/news/spoolnews <system>
will copy stdin out to a spool directory.  /usr/lib/news/sendspoolednews
is run from cron periodically, and will uux all news which has been
spooled, then start a single uucico.  If you run over a different network,
you can make suitable mods.

To install:  mkdir /usr/spool/outnews.  For each system you spool news
to, mkdir a subdirectory with that name.  The subdirectories should be
mode 777 unless you want to deal with protection issues, which I haven't
bothered with.

Now edit your sys file, changing, say
	foo:net.all,fa.all,to.foo::
to
	foo:net.all,fa.all,to.foo::/usr/lib/news/spoolnews foo
Install the two shell scripts (mode 755) in /usr/lib/news.

Add a line to /usr/lib/crontab such as
	0 0,2,4,6,8,12,17,19,21 * * * /usr/lib/news/sendspoolednews
to send outgoing news at the given times of the day.  If you want
it to go every hour, make the 2nd field just "*".  The above entry
will send news every two hours during unloaded times of a typical
working day - adjust it as you see fit locally.  A line for a system
with phone bill problems might look like
	0 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,23 * * * /usr/lib/news/sendspoolednews
--- spoolnews
: ' spoolnews system : spool outgoing news to be transmitted to system '
S=/usr/spool/outnews
cat > $S/$1/$$
--- sendspoolednews
: ' sendspoolednews : transmit news which has been spooled'
S=/usr/spool/outnews
cd $S
for sys in *
do
	cd $sys
	for file in *
	do
		uux -z -r - $sys!rnews < $file
		rm -f $file
	done
	cd ..
done
/usr/lib/uucp/uucico -r1 &
--- end