HDB Grading is it available in the UNIX PC version?

[Mike Levin]

Although grading is not available, let me share with you a few tricks
for accomplishing sending news at special times, or only upon polling.

First, set up the 'sys' file for that system to batch- that will create
entries in /usr/spool/batch/-sysname- for each article to be sent, but
doesn't hand them over to the uucp system.  Then, simply create a cron
entry to handle doing a 'sendbatch' at the appropriate time, and that
allows you to not call them with the news during the day.

Next, if you want to get a bit fancier, set up so that when that system
logs in (i.e. polls you), they don't directly start up uucico, but
rather a script (or executable) which first invokes the sendbatch (in
background), sleeps for about 10-15 seconds (depending on how fast your
machine is), and THEN starts up uucico.  That way, when they call you,
they get the news during that connection, but if you are simply sending
a piece of mail to them, that's all they get.

SUPER-FANCY-  set up multiple logins for them.  I.E.-  if the system is
called 'foo', set up Ufoo for mail only, and Nfoo for mail+news.  Thus,
Ufoo simply starts up uucico, and Nfoo does the forking off of sendbatch.

We run that way on our Pyramid at work, as we have a number of sites that
we offer news+mail service to, but we don't want to pay for news.


If you write executables to do this, please copy me (or post), if you do
scripts (that's all we've done, thus far) I'd still be interested in
seeing how YOU do it.  If you are unsure, email me and I'll send you
copies of the scripts ( I wouldn't post them-- they're pretty lame).


					Mike Levin



-- 
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| | ___  ___ |_| ___   Michael Levin     SilentRadio Headquarters- Los Angeles
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|_|\___/ \_/ |_||_|_|  {pacbell|pyramid|csun}!srhqla!levin - levin at magnus.UUCP