University of California at Berkeley
Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences
Instructional & Electronics Support
/share/b/pub/news.help
Using the USENET Network News Facility
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Feb 7 2014
CONTENTS:
NOTICE: USENET has been retired at UCB
Overview
USENET Policies and Procedures
Etiquette
CSUA News Server
Other News Servers (Google, etc)
Netscape WEB-Based News Reader
UNIX text-based News Readers ("rn", "nn", "Pnews", .newsrc file)
Using PINE to read news
Accessing ucb.* Newsgroups from Off-Campus
Posting to ucb.* newsgroups via email
Digests of Articles in Class Newsgroups from Previous semesters
Posting news articles from the command line
Canceling an article you have posted
NOTICE: USENET has been retired at UCB
-------------------------------------------
The USENET worldwide distributed text-based Internet discussion system
was widely used on campus until about 2010. Currrently, there are no
active USENET servers on campus. The information below if largely
historical.
The campus-wide USENET newsgroup service on agate.berkeley.edu ended
after the Fall 2008 semester.
Until 2011, the CSUA (http://csua.berkeley.edu) student organization
hosted a USENET server on news.csua.berkeley.edu just for ucb.*
newsgroups used by EECS classes.
For current information about alternatives, please see
http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/connecting.html#news.
Overview
--------
The USENET news facility is a network-based utility for reading and posting
messages ("articles") related to specific topics ("newsgroups"). There are
a series of news servers on computers all over the world. The servers pass
articles for selected newsgroups and hold them for a while. You can read
and post to a news server using WEB-based programs (Netscape Communicator,
Outlook Express) and UNIX command-line programs ("rn", "xrn", "nn", "Pnews").
For more information, please see the newsgroup
news.announce.newusers
You can access that from Netscape using the URL
news://news.berkeley.edu/news.announce.newusers
On UNIX systems, You tell the news reader which server to use by setting
the NNTPSERVER environment variable, for example:
setenv NNTPSERVER news.berkeley.edu
Your .newsrc file is specific to the server you use, so if you change
servers you *will* need to change your .newsrc files too (see below).
USENET Policies and Procedures
------------------------------
Summary:
- Postings must be appropriate to the topic of the newsgroup.
- Postings must not be obscene, racist or generally offensive.
- Postings of advertisements must be confined to the biz.* groups.
- "Excessive" crossposts are rejected by news.berkeley.edu to
avoid spam. So don't post to more than 5 newsgroups at a time.
- If the same message is posted more than 2 or 3 times, it may also
be rejected; it triggers an Excessive Multi-Post (EMP) filter.
For more policy and usage information, please refer to the articles under:
http://www.net.berkeley.edu/dcns/usenet/
Etiquette
---------
The news articles you post may be read by anyone. People who post are
expected to follow accepted rules of behavior - no obscenities, no offensive
remarks of a racial or sexual nature. The University is bound by the laws
and policies that protect its members from insult and harassment and can
not permit University facilities (ie the local news servers) to be used
for such purposes.
In general, the contents of articles posted to any news group should be
appropriate to the subject of that group. Articles should be written so
that no reader will be made to feel harassed, insulted or libeled by the
contents. In some cases these offenses may be illegal, in others they
may just be anti-social. The actions of any UCB user reflects on all of
us, and so you are expected to maintain a professional attitude in your
news postings.
Class news groups, with names such as "ucb.class.ee1", are intended ONLY
for announcements and discussions that are related to the course. Users
should not post advertisements, jokes or derogatory messages to class news
groups.
Postings that advertise items or services for sale should be confined to
the biz.* newsgroups. Some users must pay to receive USENET articles,
and some newgroups are already very active. Users become very annoyed
when commercial advertisements are forced on them.
Certain news groups are more permissive than others, and users who choose
to subsribe to them may encounter offensive material. These groups are
easily identified by their names and are within the "alt" category. The
USENET is not strictly regulated and newsgroups are maintained at each
server at the discretion of the local administrators.
CSUA News Server
----------------
From about January 2009 through May 2011, The CSUA generously volunteered
to host a USENET server just for the ucb.* newsgroups (including the EECS
class newsgroups). The server name was "news.csua.berkeley.edu".
How to read and post to the newsgroups on "news.csua.berkeley.edu":
1) Use the EECS Instructional WebNews client. This can be accessed
from anywhere using an EECS Instructional UNIX account.
(http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/webnews).
2) Use a WEB client such as Thunderbird or a text-based client such as
pine. No logon is required for access from computers on UCB campus
subnets, AirBears2 and the UCB VPN. A shared logon (username=usenet,
password=gobears) is required for access from off-campus, to
discourage spammers.
You can include a link to a class newsgroup in a WEB page with this HTML
code (using "cs152" as an example):
CS152 Newsgroup
Other News Servers (Google, etc)
-------------------------------
News articles from the UCB server will propagate to other USENET servers
such as Google (http://news.google.com) by default. This is sometimes
convenient, but there are 2 problems to consider:
- the articles on external servers don't expire at the end of a semester
- spammers can collect email addresses from articles on external servers
If you are posting to the campus news server ("news.berkeley.edu"), you can
stop your article from going to external servers if you put a "Distribution:
local" or "Distribution: ucb" (or ucb-local) header in your news posting.
Netscape WEB-Based News Reader
------------------------------
Netscape has built-in facilties for reading and posting network news. In
various versions of Netscape, the facilities are called "News", "Collabra"
or "Messenger". The "help" buttons in Netscape explain how to use it.
Here are the steps for using Netscape Messenger v 4.61:
Set the news server:
- from the "Edit" menu, left-click on "Preferences"
- left-click on "Mail & Newsgroups"
- left-click on "Newsgroup Servers"
- enter "news.berkeley.edu"
- left-click on "OK"
Set the newsgroups:
- from the "Communicator" menu, left-click on "Messenger"
- right-click on "news.berkeley.edu", select "Subscribe..."
- it'll take a few minutes to download the list of available newsgroups
- under "All', you can scroll and select the newsgroups you want to read
- OR, under "New" you can type in he newsgroups you want to read
- left-click on "OK"
Post to a newsgroup:
- from the "Communicator" menu, select "Messenger"
- list your newsgroups by left-clicking on "news.berkeley.edu" if needed
- left-click on the group you want to post to
- left-click on the "New Msg" button
- type the message, etc and "Send" it
Read from a newsgroup:
- from the "Communicator" menu, select "Messenger"
- list your newsgroups by left-clicking on "news.berkeley.edu" if needed
- left-click on the group you want to read
- if there are any, subjects and messages will appear in the other frames
UNIX text-based News Readers ("rn", "nn", "Pnews", .newsrc file)
----------------------------------------------------------------
rn
is a simple text-based UNIX news reader. It displays one article at
a time, allowing you to read it and giving you options to reply and/or
save it to a file. It will save the article in a subdirectory called
~/News. Sometimes you will see the message "Checking active list for
new newsgroups...". If you are in a hurry and rn is taking too long
to do this, you can just hit Ctrl-C, and rn will allow you to read
news immediately. However, if there are new newsgroups, you wont find
out about them this way. See "man rn" for details.
nn
is the best text-based news reader to use on EECS Instructional UNIX
systems. It uses your .newsrc and "setenv NNTPSERVER news.berkeley.edu"
variable just as "rn" does. But when you type "nn", you get a full screen
of subject lines for the first newsgroup. If the list is longer than one
screen, you hit to continue. You can select articles individually
for reading, and it starts displaying the selected articles after you've
seen all the choices for one group. By default it displays only the
article, although you can also display the header. After reading, saving
and/or replying to the articles from one group, the sequence starts again
with the full screen of subject lines from the next news group. It will
save the article in a subdirectory called ~/News. You can get on-line
help ("?") and quit at any time ("Q").
There are *many* features and options, and some huge man pages - start
with "man nn". (This one is 78 pages long!) You can install an "init"
file to set up options for "nn". There is a default one in
/usr/local/nn.lib/init that you can copy to ~/.nn/init.
The greatest benefit is the ease of browsing and *not* having to read
the majority of articles. You can usually tell just from the subject
or author whether or not you are interested. And "nn" reduces network
traffic by delivering only the articles you request. If you are all
caught up on reading new articles, "nn" just displays: "No News (is
good news)" See "man nn" for details.
trn
is an menu-based news reader and posting utility on UNIX systems.
See "man trn" for details.
xrn
is an X-Winodows based article posting utility on UNIX systems.
See "man xrn" for details.
tin
is an menu-driven text-based article posting utility on UNIX systems.
See "man tin" for details.
The .newsrc file
is used by the UNIX news readers to control what newsgroups you see and
don't see. It also records which articles you have seen. Normally you
don't need to know that this file even exists, but sometimes it is
convenient to edit it manually (using "vi" or "emacs"). Each line lists
a newsgroup and ends in a "!" or ":". The "!" means that you will not
see any articles from this newsgroup, the ":" means you are subscribed
to the newsgroup, and the numbers to right indicate which articles you
have previously read. If a newsgroup exists, but is not listed in your
.newsrc, you will be asked if you want to subscribe to it next time you
read news. See also "man newsrc".
Using PINE to read news
-----------------------
If you are a regular user of PINE and you would like to use PINE to
read news, you can edit your .pinerc file directly to enable access
to the UCB news server:
1) Change the "nntp-server=" line in your ~/.pinerc to be:
nntp-server=news.berkeley.edu
2) Change the "folder-collections line in your ~/.pinerc to be:
folder-collections=mail/[],
news {news.berkeley.edu:119/service=NNTP}#news.[]
This tells pine the name of the news server and adds a collection
in your FOLDER LIST called "news".
Here's how to use the PINE Setup feature to enable newsgroups:
Start from the PINE main menu
-> Hit S for SETUP - Configure Pine Options
-> Hit L for collectionList
-> Hit A to add collection
Specify these parameters:
Nickname : News
Server : news.berkeley.edu/service=NNTP
Path : <-- blank
View : <-- blank
Hit ^X to Exit/save.
Hit Y for Yes to save changes
Hit E to Exit setup.
Now, to view newsgroups:
Start from the PINE main menu
-> L for FOLDER LIST - Select a folder to view
-> N for News groups on news.berkeley.edu/service=NNTP
-> [Return] to View collection
-> A to Add a newsgroup
At the prompt
Enter newsgroup name (or partial name to get a list):
you should type the newsgroup name (ucb.class.cs170 for example)
and hit Return.
Accessing ucb.* Newsgroups from Off-Campus
------------------------------------------
Access the news.berkeley.edu news server is restricted to computers that
are on UC Berkeley computers unless you use an campus proxy service for
this. Two proxy services are available to EECS students:
http://www.net.berkeley.edu/usenet/aus/
uses CalNet ID for authentication, for all UCB students.
http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/webnews
uses EECS Instructional UNIX account for authentication,
for students in EECS classes who do not have SID numbers.
Please see http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/connecting.html#news for details
about how to use these and other methods to read news from off-campus.
Posting to ucb.* newsgroups via email
-------------------------------------
*** Nov 2007: THIS SERVICE WILL BE DISCONTINUED AFTER DEC 21, 2007. IT HAS
*** BECOME A SOURCE OF SPAM TO THE NEWSGROUPS. Users will still be able to
*** post to the UCB newsgroups at news.berkeley.edu without a password from
*** any computer on an UCB network. Off campus users can post to UCB
*** newsgroups at http://www.net.berkeley.edu/usenet/aus/ after logging in
*** there with their CalNet IDs.
A service was created in July 1994 that allows a news article to be posted
to ucb.* newsgroups by sending the article in email to news.berkeley.edu.
The recipient user name is the name of the newsgroup with the periods (`.')
converted to dashes (`-').
Note that this works ONLY for newsgroups with names that start with "ucb".
Examples:
to post to the newsgroup: send the article to:
-------------------------- -------------------------------------
ucb.test ucb-test@news.berkeley.edu
ucb.ee.undergrad ucb-ee-undergrad@news.berkeley.edu
ucb.cs.grad ucb-cs-grad@news.berkeley.edu
ucb.class.cs61a ucb-class-cs61a@news.berkeley.edu
Note that if you wish to post the same message to more than one newsgroup
using email, you have to send it as an individual message to each newsgroup.
This is because the the related mail server attempts to prevent loops and
spamming by checking for duplicate posts. So you can either send multiple
messages or use a USENET client (Netscape Messenger, tin, etc) instead of
email to cross-post.
Digests of Articles in Class Newsgroups from Previous semesters
---------------------------------------------------------------
Digests of previous articles for EECS class newsgroups are available via
anonymous ftp to news.Berkeley.EDU, within in the directory /pub/ucb.class.
Here is an example of how to copy a digest to your machine using anonymous
ftp:
% ftp ftp.net.berkeley.edu
Name: ftp
Password:
ftp> cd usenet/ucb.class-archives
ftp> ls
ftp> cd fa00
ftp> mget ucb.class.c9a*
ftp> quit
Before August 1993, news digests and an old nn server were available on
Pasteur in a filesystem called /home/pasteur/news. The /home/pasteur/news
filesystems has been removed from service, as 'News' is now providing both
the digests and the nn server.
Posting news articles from the command line
--------------------------------------------
You can use the "Pnews" program to post a news article from the UNIX command
line. If you want to post to ucb.test, for example, you would type:
% Pnews ucb.test
Pnews has a subtle interaction with Emacs and SSH X11 forwarding:
You may get an error such as " Fatal error (11)./usr/sww/bin/Pnews:
20982 Memory fault" when trying to compose or edit a message. This error
message occurs when you tell your SSH client to forward X11 connections,
but you don't have an X server running on your client. At that point, if
you try to start emacs (without the "-nw" option for "no windows"), emacs
will return an error code to Pnews, which produces this unhelpful error
message.
The workaround is to run the following commands before attempting to post
a message:
setenv VISUAL "emacs -nw"
setenv EDITOR "emacs -nw"
or to start an X server (e.g. Exceed) on your client.
Canceling an article you have posted
------------------------------------
You can cancel an article that you previously posted by using the "C" command
within "rn". Note that you must do this on the same machine from which you
posted the article, because the news server uses that information to identify
you. The news servers process requests in batch, so the cancellation will
not take effect immediately. Also, if your article has spread to other
USENET servers off campus, there is no guarantee that all the servers will
cancel the article. So when posting, it is best to assume that the contents
may be read by everyone and may not be retrievable.
EECS Instructional Support
378/384//386 Cory, 333 Soda
inst@eecs.berkeley.edu