There's actually more than one way to get Changi to work with a news
provider. Chanx
is one way, it represents a pull feed.
Chanx asks
the news provider what's new in a group and then iteratively requests
the articles pulled down. Some providers, Netcom for example, and
many others, I hear, don't support pull feeds because they are too
resource-intensive (It turns out that Usenet news is the biggest drain
on their systems and a pull feed can lead to very abusive behavior).
Netcom uses an INN (Internet Network News) news server. They've
configured it so that the crucial commands for a pull feed (eg.
"NEWNEWS" and "ARTICLE
What they do support is a push feed. On a push feed the news
server periodically connects to your local Changi
server and dumps news into its supported groups (those that
you and the provider have agreed to). This way the provider gets to
carefully control the conditions and timing of news movement. To
perform a push feed the remote server iteratively sends an NNTP
command called "IHAVE" to Changi with the articles' Message-ID as the
argument. If Changi hasn't gotten this article, the remote sends it
(all part of the IHAVE exchange).
If you're not sure what your provider offers for an interface TELNET
into the provider's news server (remember to use NNTP port 119).
Issue the HELP command and it will tell you what commands it supports.
If you see NEWNEWS and ARTICLE, you can use
Chanx to pull the news.
If you don't see these but do see IHAVE then you will have to
configure for a push feed. You'll need to independently talk to your
provider about how their push feed is supported. Some providers have an
automated way of allowing you to configure the push feed by sending
email in a precise format to their news support robot. Assuming you
have a news-feed as part of your agreement with the provider, they
will have to tell you whether their server is configured manually or
automatically.
Finally, there is one last problem. Everything we've talked about
here deals with receiving the news -- not posting news back to the
provider's news-server. If you find that your provider only offers a
push feed, they will most likely require that posts also use IHAVE to
push articles back from Changi-to-provider. Changi can do this if
you set up a proper newsfeeds file
as shown in the following example.
ME:*,!control,!control.*,!junk/!local::
news.ping.de:/!local:L,Tp:rnews -Hnews.ping.de
Changi will call
Rnews on each local post it receives and write
the article immediately to the standard input of
Rnews. In turn, Rnews
will transmit the article to news.ping.de using the IHAVE
protocol.
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URL: changi/manual/pushfeed.html
Created: 27 October 1996
Revised: 21 November 1996
Author: harald@os2point.ping.de