I am sending the following note to you because you all had expressed
interest at one time or another in either running, beta testing, or
somethin-elsing the remote netnews software which I have been working
on here at Berkeley.  This is basically a status report of where I
am in the project, and what remains to be done.  If you'd like to help
work on the project, or make suggestions or flames, those are welcome.
My apologies for not doing this sooner.

     The status of the server is as follows: I have modified
"rn" to run with it, and it works quite well.  It's very fast (although
long net.sources articles tend to drag over the net), and it is a full
implementation of "rn", except for the fact that you cannot post news.
I intend to correct this by hacking at inews, so it knows how to forward
to the server machine over the net when a newsgroup isn't local.

     The problem here, is, as usual, time.  For one thing, the daemon runs
under inetd, which is a recent Berkeley development, and I'm not sure it
exists elsewhere.  So, the daemon needs to be rewritten to stand on its
own.  Second, the daemon currently forks off one copy of itself per
request; this could quickly drive a machine into the groud.  It
needs to be modified such that one server can handle about 10 users, and
then fork off a copy.  Finally, inews needs to be patched as I've mentioned
above.

     Of course, none of this is necessarilly conforming to the info-lan
discussion group which Chuq has been running.  So I have no idea how
compatible this will be when all is said and done.

     On top of all this, school starts tomorrow and it will be a hectic
semester.  Since the only time I have for this is my own, and that's
precious little, I don't know when I will get around to doing the stuff
that needs be done.

     So, the end result is that you're welcome to a copy of the modified
"rn" software (it's about a meg, and it's all #ifdef'd, so you simply
define SERVER and compile it).  If you wish to do this, let me know.
And offers to help will be greatly appreciated.

						Phil Lapsley
						(phil@ucb-vax.ARPA)
						(...!ucbvax!phil)