| 글 쓴 이(By): mtduck (정 주 원) 날 짜 (Date): 1993년04월10일(토) 01시39분39초 KST 제 목(Title): FAQ: USENET Software: History and Sources From worak!kum.kaist.ac.kr!ames!purdue!not-for-mail Wed Feb 3 18:35:34 1993 Xref: worak news.admin.misc:745 news.announce.newusers:32 news.software.readers:663 news.software.b:463 news.answers:1507 Path: worak!kum.kaist.ac.kr!ames!purdue!not-for-mail From: spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) Newsgroups: news.admin.misc,news.announce.newusers,news.software.readers,news.software.b,news.answers Subject: USENET Software: History and Sources Supersedes: <spaf-software_726771276@cs.purdue.edu> Followup-To: news.admin.misc Date: 1 Feb 1993 00:45:59 -0500 Organization: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ. Lines: 417 Approved: spaf@cs.purdue.edu Expires: 2 Apr 93 17:45:59 GMT Message-ID: <spaf-software_728545559@cs.purdue.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: ector.cs.purdue.edu Archive-name: usenet-software/part1 Original from: spaf@purdue (Gene Spafford) Last-change: 31 Jan 1993 by spaf@purdue (Gene Spafford) Currently, Usenet readers interact with the news using a number of software packages and programs. This article mentions the important ones and a little of their history, gives pointers where you can look for more information and ends with some special notes about "foreign" and "obsolete" software. At the very end is a list of sites from which current versions of the Usenet software may be obtained. Note that the number of software packages available to run news, especially on PCs, is increasing. This article lists only a few of the many news packages available, and the presence or absence of any particular software package should not be construed as indicating anything about its suitability usefulness. History ------- Usenet came into being in late 1979, shortly after the release of V7 Unix with UUCP. Two Duke University grad students in North Carolina, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, thought of hooking computers together to exchange information with the Unix community. Steve Bellovin, a grad student at the University of North Carolina, put together the first version of the news software using shell scripts and installed it on the first two sites: "unc" and "duke." At the beginning of 1980 the network consisted of those two sites and "phs" (another machine at Duke), and was described at the January Usenix conference. Steve Bellovin later rewrote the scripts into C programs, but they were never released beyond "unc" and "duke." Shortly thereafter, Steve Daniel did another implementation in C for public distribution. Tom Truscott made further modifications, and this became the "A" news release. In 1981 at U. C. Berkeley, grad student Mark Horton and high school student Matt Glickman rewrote the news software to add functionality and to cope with the ever increasing volume of news -- "A" News was intended for only a few articles per group per day. This rewrite was the "B" News version. The first public release was version 2.1 in 1982; the 1.* versions were all beta test. As the net grew, the news software was expanded and modified. The last version maintained and released primarily by Mark was 2.10.1. Rick Adams, at the Center for Seismic Studies, took over coordination of the maintenance and enhancement of the B News software with the 2.10.2 release in 1984. By this time, the increasing volume of news was becoming a concern, and the mechanism for moderated groups was added to the software at 2.10.2. Moderated groups were inspired by ARPA mailing lists and experience with other bulletin board systems. In late 1986, version 2.11 of B News was released, including a number of changes to support a new naming structure for newsgroups, enhanced batching and compression, enhanced ihave/sendme control messages, and other features. The current release of B News is 2.11, patchlevel 19. Article format is specified in RFC 1036 (see below). B News has been declared "dead" by a number of people, including Rick Adams, and is unlikely to be upgraded further; most new UUCP sites are using C News (see next paragraph). A new version of news, known as C News, was developed at the University of Toronto by Geoff Collyer and Henry Spencer. This version is a rewrite of the lowest levels of news to increase article processing speed, decrease article expiration processing and improve the reliability of the news system through better locking, etc. The package was released to the net in the autumn of 1987. For more information, see the paper "News Need Not Be Slow," published in The Winter 1987 Usenix Technical Conference proceedings. The most recent version of C News is the 2 May 1992 "performance release." C News can be obtained from its official archive site, cs.toronto.edu, using FTP. Another Usenet system, known as InterNetNews, or INN, was written by Rich Salz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net>. INN is designed to run on Unix hosts that have a socket interface. It is optimized for larger hosts where most traffic uses NNTP, but it does provide full UUCP support. INN is very fast, and since it integrates NNTP many people find it easier to administer only one package. The package was publicly released on August 20, 1992. For more information, see the paper "InterNetNews: Usenet Transport for Internet Sites" published in the June 1992 Usenix Technical Conference Proceedings. INN can be obtained from many places; its official archive site is ftp.uu.net in the directory networking/news/nntp/inn. ANU-NEWS is news package written by Geoff Huston of Australia for VMS systems. ANU-NEWS is complete news system that allows reading, posting, direct replies, moderated newsgroups, etc. in a fashion closely related to regular news. The implementation includes the RFC 1036 news propagation algorithms and integrated use of the NNTP protocols (see below) to support remote news servers, implemented as a VAX/VMS Decnet object. An RFC 977 server implemented as a Decnet object is also included. ANU-NEWS currently includes support for the following TCP/IP protocols: MultiNet, CMU/TEK, Wollongong WIN/TCP, UCX (TCP/IP Services for OpenVMS), EXOS, and TCPware. The ANU-NEWS interface is similar to standard DEC screen oriented systems. The license for the software is free, and there are no restrictions on the re-distribution. For more info, contact gih900@fac.anu.oz.au (Geoff Huston). ANU-NEWS is available for FTP from kuhub.cc.ukans.edu. Contact SLOANE@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU for more info. A screen-oriented news client for VMS that works with CMU/tek, EXOS, MultiNet, UCX, Wollongong and DECnet is also available via ftp from iraun1.ira.uka.de, info.rz.uni-ulm.de, and ftp.spc.edu (contact Bernd Onasch <onasch@ira.uka.de> for details). A port of C News for the Commodore Amiga under AmigaDOS (NOT Unix), is available. The port was done by Frank J. Edwards <crash@ckctpa.uucp>, and available from Larry Rosenman <ler@lerami.lerctr.org>. Also, Matt Dillon <dillon@overload.berkely.ca.us>, has greatly improved the UUCP clone for AmigaDOS, currently V1.16D, available for ftp from ftp.uu.net in /systems/amiga/dillon. The package also includes a newsreader very loosely like the real rn. Dillon also has a "vn" port provided by Eric Lee Green. This software is also available on Bix, and for ftp from wuarchive.wustl.edu (many other Amiga newsreaders are also available on theis ftp site). Several popular screen-oriented news reading interfaces have been developed in the last few years to replace the traditional "readnews" interface. The first of these was "vnews" and it was written by Kenneth Almquist. "vnews" provides a "readnews"-like command interface, but displays articles using direct screen positioning. It appears to have been inspired, to some extent, by the "notes" system (described below). "vnews" is currently distributed with the standard 2.11 news source. A second, more versatile interface, "rn", was developed by Larry Wall (the author of Perl) and released in 1984. This interface also uses full-screen display with direct positioning, but it includes many other useful features and is very popular with many regular net readers. The interface includes reading, discarding, and/or processing of articles based on user-definable patterns, and the ability of the user to develop customized macros for display and keyboard interaction. "rn" is currently at release 4.4. It is being maintained by Stan Barber of the Baylor College of Medicine. "rn" is not provided with the standard news software release, but is very widely available because of its popularity. The software can be obtained from its official archive site, lib.tmc.edu, using FTP, and via mail from archive-server@bcm.tmc.edu A variant of "rn" is "trn" by Wayne Davison. Trn adds the ability to follow "threads of discussions" in newsgroups; its latest version 2.2 is based on rn 4.4. It uses a Reference-line database to allow the user to take advantage of the "discussion tree" formed by an article and its replies. This results in a true reply-ordered reading of the articles, complete with a small ascii representation of the current article's position in the discussion tree. Trn can be obtained from ftp.coe.montana.edu in the /pub/trn directory, from uunet in the news subdirectory, and from many other archive servers world-wide. xrn is an X11-based interface to NNTP that was written by Rick Spickelmier and Ellen Sentovich (UC Berkeley). The current version is 6.17. xrn supports many features, including sorting by subject, user-settable key bindings, graceful handling of NNTP server crashes, and many of the features of rn (including KILL files and key bindings similar to rn). xrn is actively supported by the authors with bug fixing and feature addition support from many of the users. xrn can be retrieved from most of the popular FTP sites (gatekeeper.dec.com, ftp.uu.net, export.lcs.mit.edu). Another X11-based newsreader is xvnews. This is a news reader designed primarily for Sun workstations running OpenWindows. It runs with NNTP and is compatible with rn style commands. It is available from export.lcs.mit.edu in the contrib directory. There are two popular macro packages named "GNUS" and "Gnews" that can be used with the GNU Emacs text editor. These allow reading, replying, and posting interaction with the news from inside the Emacs text editor. Client code exists to get the articles using NNTP rather than from a local disk. Copies can be found on most archive sites that carry the GNU archives. "nn" is yet another reader interface, developed by Kim F. Storm of Texas Instruments A/S, Denmark, and released in 1989. nn differs from the traditional readnews and vnews by presenting a menu of article subject and sender-name lines, allowing you to preselect articles to read. nn is also a very fast newsreader, as it keeps a database of article headers on-line. (I.e. it trades space for time. A good rule of thumb is that the nn database size is 5%-10% of your news spool. So up to 110% of your news spool is the amount of space news and the nn database will take.) The current version of nn is 6.4.16. nn can be obtained via anonymous FTP from dkuug.dk, uop.uop.edu, or various other sites; European sites should request the sources from their nearest backbone site. Yet another newsreader is the "tin" reader. It operates with threads, has different article organization methods, and is full-screen oriented. tin works on a local news spool or over an NNTP connection. It has been posted to alt.sources, and further information is available from Iain Lea (iain%anl433.uucp@Germany.EU.net). The current release of tin is 1.1 PL6. Tin is based more on the Notes and tass systems than "rn". There is an extensive list of features, including interfaces to batch modes and auto unpacking mechanisms. In March 1986 a package was released implementing news transmission, posting, and reading using the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) (as specified in RFC 977). This protocol allows hosts to exchange articles via TCP/IP connections rather than using the traditional uucp. It also permits users to read and post news (using a modified version of "rn" or other user agents) from machines which cannot or choose not to install the USENET news software. Reading and posting are done using TCP/IP messages to a server host which does run the USENET software. Sites which have many workstations like the Sun and Apollo products find this a convenient way to allow workstation users to read news without having to store articles on each system. Many of the Usenet hosts that are also on the Internet exchange news articles using NNTP because the load impact of NNTP is much lower than uucp (and NNTP ensures much faster propagation). NNTP grew out of independent work in 1984-1985 by Brian Kantor at U. C. San Diego and Phil Lapsley at U. C. Berkeley. It is now in release 1.5.11 dated 11 february 1991, with the next planned release at 1.6. NNTP includes support for System V UNIX with Excelan Ethernet cards and DECNET under Ultrix. NNTP was developed at U. C. Berkeley by Phil Lapsley with help from Erik Fair, Steven Grady, and Mike Meyer, among others. The NNTP package is distributed on the 4.3BSD release tape (although that is version 1.2a and out-of-date) and is also available from the various authors, many major hosts, and by anonymous FTP from lib.tmc.edu, mthvax.cs.miami.edu and ftp.uu.net. Reader NNTP clients for VMS are also available, including VMS/VNEWS (current release 1.4) and an upcoming reader only version of ANU-NEWS. VMS/VNEWS is available via anonymous ftp from arizona.edu (contact jms@arizona.edu for more information) or at any site which archives vmsnet.source. Although the current release of ANU-NEWS is usable as a reader it can be difficult when used with a UNIX server. An NNTP newsreader for Macintoshs is available called HyperNews. It is implemented as a HyperCard stack and depends on MacTCP. It is available from many Mac archives, including ftp.apple.com and sumex-aim.stanford.edu There is also an NNTP-based netnews reader for Symbolics Lisp Machines (under Genera 7) available for anonymous FTP from ucbvax.berkeley.edu [128.32.133.1] in pub/nntp-clients/lispm written by Ian Connolly <connolly@coins.cs.umass.edu> and maintained by Richard Welty <welty@lewis.crd.ge.com>. In addition, another NNTP-based news browser is available running under Genera 7 and Genera 8. It provides mouse driven hierarchic browsing of newsgroups and articles, with support for X11 servers on remote machines. It is available for anonymous FTP on flash.bellcore.com [128.96.32.20] in the directory pub/lispm/news-reader/. It is written and maintained by Peter Clitherow <pc@bellcore.com> A TOPS-20 reader was developed by Dave Edwards of SRI <dle@kl.sri.com>, but current availability is unknown. An NNTP reader suite for PC's running MS-DOS and having Excelan boards is available for ftp from ames.arc.nasa.gov; get the pcrrn files. There are two MS-DOS news readers that can be obtained from bcm.tmc.edu in the "nfs" directory. They both require PC-NFS (from Sun) to work. They will both work under PC/TCP from FTP Software early this year. Source will be provided at that time. "trumpet" is a NNTP based news reader for DOS which will also run under Windows (although only as a DOS application). There is Lan Workplace version which is also available. It works using the Clarkson Packet Drivers either over a Novell network or a PC with an 'ordinary' TCP/IP connection. It offers a very intuitive interface with most of the basic facilities required in a newsreader (but without some of the 'bells and whistles found in something like rn). It has facilities for using SMTP to forward/reply etc. The latest version is 1.05g and is shareware available at most main ftp sites. Details on RN, a newsreader for systems running "Waffle", may be obtained by sending mail to kafka@desert.hacktic.nl. At least one IBM VM/SP (CMS) version of the Usenet software is available. It is known as PSU NetNews, and it is maintained by Linda Littleton (lrl@psuvm.bitnet/psuvm.psu.edu). Version 2.4 of the software is available from LISTSERV@PSUVM. PSU NetNews supports only 3270 terminals, and uses XEDIT as its screen driver. Most major VM sites appear to use this package. NetNews supports locally-stored news, not NNTP reading. Since january 1993 a complete NNTP server is available for VM systems. It provides news reading, posting and feed processing compatible to the Unix NNTP implementations. The code is written in IBM's VM Rexx. It assumes that you already have installed PSU VM NETNEWS. The VM NNTP package, written by Kris Van Hees (gutest6@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be) who also takes care of the maintenance. The current version is 1.0.1 and requires IBM's FAL TCP/IP and Arty Ecock's RXSOCKET which is available from the IBMTCP FIELLIST on listserv@pucc. The VM NNTP package can be obtained from the NNTP PACKAGE on listserv@blekul11. There is NNTP support for PSU NetNews for bulk news receipt: NNTPXFER will poll another site for news, and NNTPRCVR will receive news sent from a Unix NNTPXMIT process. Either program sends the news articles to NetNews for processing. Contact Andy Hooper (hooper@qucdn.bitnet or qucdn.queensu.ca) for more information, or obtain them from listserv@qucdn in PUBLIC FILELIST. These programs are provided with source, and require IBM's FAL TCP/IP and Pascal. An NNTPXMIT sender that works in cooperation with PSU NETNEWS is available from Herman Van Uytven (SYSTHVU@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be). There is at least one NNTP news-reader for VM using XEDIT as its screen manager: NNR. Contact Paul Campbell (pc@mbunix.mitre.org) for information. The program requires IBM's FAL TCP/IP. The software is available for anonymous ftp from rusmv1.rus.uni-stuttgart.de [129.69.1.12] in the directory soft/kommunikation/news/beginner/software/vm-cms/*. An NNTP news reader is available for TSO/ISPF, called NNMVS. NNMVS is written by Stephen Bacher <seb1525@mvs.draper.com> at Draper Laboratory. It requires C/370 V1R2 (though V1R1 will work) and uses TCP/IP sockets. It is now available via anonymous ftp at ftp.uni-stuttgart.de under the directory /soft/kommunikation/news/beginner/software/nnmvs. The current release is Version 2 Release 3 Modification Level 1 (in pseudo-IBM parlance). Special note on "notes" and old versions of news ------------------------------------------------ Users of these systems may note problems in their interactions with the Usenet. In particular, postings may be made by "notes" users to moderated groups but they will not usually propagate throughout the entire Usenet. The same may happen to users of old B news software. The "notes" software package uses a different internal organization of articles, and a different interchange format than that of the standard Usenet software. It was inspired by the notesfiles available in the PLATO system and was developed independently from the Usenet news. Eventually, the "notes" network and Usenet were joined via gateways doing (sometimes imperfect) protocol translation. The interface for "notes" is similar to "rn" but implements different features, many of which are dictated by its internal organization. "notes" was written in 1980-1981 by Ray Essick and Rob Kolstad, (then) grad students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The first public release of "notes" was at the January 1982 Usenix conference. The last release of notes was version 1.7; it is no longer being actively maintained. Users of "notes" or old B news software wishing to post to moderated groups should either mail their submissions to the moderator, as listed in the monthly posting of "List of Moderators" in the group "news.lists", or else they should post from a system running up-to-date news software (i.e., C news or INN). "notes" users may obtain some patches from the comp.sources.unix archives which enable the most recent versions of "notes" to interact with moderated groups properly. Users of old B news and "notes" are also not able to take advantage of some other current B news features, such as the "checkgroups" message. "notes" continues to be a "foreign" system and B news versions are considered "obsolete." The various maintainers of the Usenet software have never expressed any commitment to maintain backwards compatibility with "foreign" or obsolete news systems and are unlikely to do so; it is the responsibility of the users to maintain compatibility of such software if they wish to continue to interact with the Usenet. Software versions & availability -------------------------------- You can obtain the version number of your news software by issuing some form of "v" command to show the current version -- consult the man page for details. Current software is obtainable from almost any major Usenet site as well as the sites noted in the body of the article, above. The following sites probably have sources to the current news software available for anyone needing a copy: Site Contact ---- ------- munnari kre@munnari.oz.au osu-cis postmaster@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu philabs usenet@philabs.philips.com pyramid usenet@pyramid.com rutgers usenet@rutgers.edu tektronix news@tektronix.tek.com watmath usenet@watmath.waterloo.edu Sources for most of the news readers and software, including news 2.11, C News, "rn", and "trn" are also available in the comp.sources.unix archives. European sites should request the sources from their nearest Eunet backbone site. Standards --------- News programs communicate with each other according to standard protocols, some of which are described by RFCs. An RFC is a Request For Comment, a de facto standard in the Internet Community. It is a form of published software standard, done through the Network Information Center (NIC) at SRI. Copies of RFCs are often posted to the net and obtainable from archive sites. Current news-related RFCs include the following: RFC 822 specifies the format of messages; RFC 1036 uses this. RFC 977 specifies NNTP, the Network News Transfer Protocol. RFC 1036 specifies the format of Usenet articles. RFC 1123 amends RFC 822. RFC 1153 specifies the digest format some moderated groups use. Newsgroups ---------- The following newsgroups cover issues discussed in this article, and can be consulted for recent developments. bit.listserv.netnws-l Discussion about NetNews on VM systems. gnu.emacs.gnews News reading under GNU Emacs using Weemba's Gnews. gnu.emacs.gnus News reading under GNU Emacs using GNUS (in English). news.software.anu-news VMS B-news software from Australian National Univ. news.software.b Discussion about B-news-compatible software. news.software.nn Discussion about the "nn" news reader package. news.software.notes Notesfile software from the Univ. of Illinois. news.software.readers General discussion about news reading software. Acknowledgements ---------------- The preparation of this article (and Usenet itself!) was greatly enhanced by the contributions and assistance of the following persons: Steve Bellovin, Ray Essick, Mark Horton, Brian Kantor, Phil Lapsley, Bob Page, Rich Salz, Tom Truscott, and Larry Wall. Thanks, folks. -- Gene Spafford Software Engineering Research Center & Dept. of Computer Sciences Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-1398 Internet: spaf@cs.purdue.edu phone: (317) 494-7825 |