Post by Peter 'EPLAN' LANGSTOEGERPost by Jim MehlhopI'd like to know how to set up my VMS box as a news server. I am
running Multinet 5.1 and OpenVMS8.2 Alpha on a PWS500au with 640 meg
and about 60 GB of free disk space. I could probably dedicate an
18GB disk for this.
Problem is that there is no current news server software for OpenVMS.
Now there would be a project for someone - port INN over to OpenVMS.
Post by Peter 'EPLAN' LANGSTOEGERThere used to be DNEWS from NETWINSITE (which I still use at home)
and ANUNEWS freeware. Both have been discontinued many years ago, but
still might work (I don't know if I could reinstall DNEWS if I need to
but it still runs on my V8.2 - and I still have problems - like premature
expiration of posts - which won't get fixed anymore - but I can't blame
them, they got me my licenses for free! Thanks again, folks).
If you have more than one disk, run VOLSHAD every time!
If you want to run a news server, think how many groups you want to run
and if they are binary (Binary groups are umpteen GB a day, so a 18GB will
last a couple of minutes/hours). Make your the disk is not a IDE disk, but
SCSI. IDE disks are only for storing the data (not for using the data then).
Both my new 160GB IDE disks (with an ACARD USCSI Converter on my PWS433au)
died within days after being used by the newsserver (I got a warranty
replacement for both of them).
I run the news server for our company on *nix, which is a full text feed
with a couple of binary hierarchies, and it averages about 40 GB inbound and
40GB outbound of traffic. A couple of my text-only peers are averaging
anywhere between 500-1000 MB per day, with tens of thousands of articles.
With that being said not only do you need a big internet link, you need
disks that can handle a lot of I/O. (like a HSG80 at minimum with RAID 0 or
0+1) AFAIK, the older versions of DNEWS do not have any other storage
mechanisms than a "traditional" spool - which is every article is stored in
a separate file, and I don't think VMS deals well with I/O of that
magnitude. There are other methods that try and deal with the huge volume of
usenet. INN has what is called CNFS (Cyclical News File System) that stores
articles into large buffers rather than separate files. I do not know about
ANUNEWS. For a full feed, some sort of buffered storage mechanism is a *must
have* for a full feed.
I don't know what your intentions are for your newsfeed (full feed,
text-only) and for readership on your server (do you plan on being relay
only or having readers on the same machine?) But if you plan on going with a
full feed, you are looking at 250-300 GB per day of data. :)