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Notesfile Reference Manual - BSD, Linux, Unix and The Internet

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1. and keys display the next response As with reading a note if there are no further responses these keys advance to the next note The number keys 1 9 will advance the appropriate number of responses If there are fewer responses the last response is displayed The or backspace keys display the previous page of the current response If the current page is the first page of the response these keys display the first page of the previous response Enter to see the base note of the current note string Press the return key to proceed to the next note 2 6 Notes amp Responses 2 6 1 Reading Notes After selecting a note from the index page or entering the notesfile with your sequencer on the note is displayed A sample display is shown below Note 15 Workstation Discussion 2 responses horton WICAT 150 4 03 pm Dec 11 1981 Wicat System 150 8 MHz 68000 Mem mgmt Multibus architecture 256k to 1 5 Mb RAM 16 32 64Kbyte EPROM 10 ms interval timer 2 RS232 19 6k async 56k sync 16 bit parallel intelligent disk controller 10 Mbyte winchester 5 25 3600 rpm access 3 ms trk trk 70 avg 150 max 960Kb floppy 5 25 300 rpm access 10 ms trk trk 267 avg 583 max Options battery backed clock graphics with touch panel video disk control High Speed Serial Network Interface Unix V7 avail Pascal C APL ADA Cobol Fortran Lisp Basic Asm Notesfi
2. s x i or n When a line of this form is read from the file the sequencer mode is set to the corresponding mode The normal s equencer the e x tended sequencer the ndex sequencer and n o sequencer es tia To always enter nfgripes micronotes and bicycle while only entering the networked notesfiles net when new notes are present one might use notes f myfile with this myfile X nfgripes micronotes bicycle S net 2 4 General Almost all notesfile commands consist of exactly one character no carriage return Only commands that are longer than one character require a terminating carriage return currently choosing a note to read is the only non single character command The commands were chosen to be easy to remember Upper case forms of commands usually function like their lower case counterparts but with some additional feature or power i e w writes a response W includes the current displayed text in the response Some commands are available almost everywhere in the notesfile system These include those for help exiting forking a shell and making a comment for the suggestion box 2 4 1 Help Typing anywhere will list the available options in an abbreviated format 2 4 2 Exiting Type q quit to leave the current notesfile Capital Q
3. These changes took place during December of 1984 and include the following differences from the 1 6 2 revision of the notesfile code e The author structure for a note response now contains the home system name This provides the ability for gateway machines to assign message id s as needed without worrying about corrupting the author s home system It also comes in handy within the context of the nfmail program nfmail can now report a true author for letters and still assign a unique identifier based on the local system e Timestamps for articles are now stored in the standard UNIX format seconds since 00 00 GMT January 1 1970 The code recognizes and stores both formats and will present either format as needed e Notes now supports full domain based addressing The nfxmit program expects a full doman address e g uiucdcs uiuc arpa unique id and system information is generated with full domain information and the notesfile news gateway now generates complete domain addressing information These changes require some care in upgrading from previous releases of the notesfile system SMM 10 C 5 Notesfile Reference Manual C 5 On the Blackboard The primary motivation for more work on the code is to eliminate known bugs Integrating other s modifications into my code has taken a lower priority Sometime down the road I hope to gather up all the lessons learned from this first version and design a second implementation
4. f file parameters which specifies a file containing a list of notesfiles to send Alternatively articles for only one system can be gatewayed with a command line of the form newsoutput ssitename notesfile list This invocation method maintains a sequencer for each system the a option maintains a single global sequencer A third invocation method of newsoutput uses the c option and specifies a specific set of systems to gateway articles for The command looks like newsoutput c gateway site file notesfile list The gateway site file specifies a file containing a list of sitenames Articles written at any of these sites are gatewayed to the news system Thus newsoutput has the ability to send articles to news for a single system several systems or any system Newsoutput assumes that a news system is installed on the local system If the news system is in a non standard location on the local system or the news system is on a different machine newsoutput can be told where to send articles The file usr spool notes utilities net how contains command tem plates for notesfile networking To specify a non standard place for the rnews program add a line of the form Usenet x uux n myneighbor usr bin rnews Non UUCP connections and the like can be specified Notesfile Reference Manual SMM 10 B 4 B 3 3 Naming Notesfiles and Newsgroups Notesfiles and newsgroups for the same topic can have
5. Issues to be considered in the second implementation include shared notesfile data bases between several hosts different user interfaces notes like readnews like notesfile servers and interfacing with extant systems
6. e The director option page has been rearranged More information is displayed more SMM 10 C 3 Notesfile Reference Manual options are processed Many of the changes are cosmetic and oriented towards helping the user figure out what is happening eThe 4 2 Bsd release of Unix now has its own kernel definition Some of the new features of 4 2 Bsd are thus included This includes longer filenames and fas ter advisory locking e4 2 Bsd and 4 1a allow processes to belong to multiple groups The notesfile code now uses all of these groups to determine access rights For example a user belongs to groups alpha beta and gamma Group alpha has read permission group beta has write permission and group gamma has no specific permissions it s covered in the Other clause The user is given the inclusive OR of his permissions in this case he is given read write privileges The default Other group is used only when none of the user s groups are explicitly named in the permission list Explicit permissions for users still takes precedence over group permissions February 1984 e The networking software and the statistics printing package now keep track of how many orphans are adopted by their true parent This lets us determine how many base notes are actually lost and how many show up behind their chil dren e The nfaccess program allows simple and
7. parms h Working sets and expiration thresholds work together in the following manner Nfarchive first determines a maximum number of notes to delete This is calculated from the number of notes in the notesfile total notes minus holes caused by deletions and the working set size The archival program proceeds through the notesfile deleting notes older than the expiration threshold until it runs out of notes or the maximum number of notes has been deleted The f option specifies a file containing a list of notesfiles to be archived Multiple f parameters are per mitted and can be intermixed with topic parameters Notesfile name pattern matching is performed on both topic parameters and the entries in a file specified by the f option Mapping between an active notesfile and its archive is listed in the file utilities net aliases Archive into This file contains pairs of ABSOLUTE notesfile names usr spool notes mynotes instead of mynotes The first entry specifies the active notesfile the second entry specifies the archive notesfile Notesfiles not appearing in Notesfile Reference Manual USD 11 22 the archive mapping file will be placed in usr spool oldnotes with the same final component as the active notesfile Conflicts are possible If unmapped the notesfiles usr spool notes mynotes and some other place mynotes will be archived into the
8. 3 1 4 Open Close Type o open to toggle the availability of the notesfile subject to the access list Closed notesfiles are unavailable to non directors 3 1 5 Network Options Type n network to toggle the availability of the notesfile for networking Arrangements must be made with the notesfile system owner to do the network transfers 3 1 6 Anonymous Notes Type a anonymous to toggle the availability of anonymous notes in the notesfile The availability of the anonymous option may provoke slanderous attacks from users whose anonymity is completely protected 3 1 7 Compression Type c compress to compress the notesfile As notes are deleted their text and index space is not reclaimed This command reclaims the space The notesfile must be closed On a VAX 11 780 20 seconds of real time on a slightly loaded system is required to reclaim the space of a notesfile with 50 remaining notes compres sion time is dependent on remaining notes Notesfiles should be compressed whenever many of their notes have been deleted The notesfile archiver nfarchive and cron 8 can be used to automate this process The director s option page displays a count of holes left by deleted notes and responses This can be used as an indication of how much wasted space is within the notesfile USD 11 15 Notesfile Reference M
9. All files in a distribution will have the same major revision number files modified since the major release will an internal revision number based off the major revision number C 2 Revision 1 5 Revision 1 5 is an intermediate revision Revision 1 4 was stillborn It s primary purpose was to integrate a number of useful modifications sent in by notesfile users A number of recent 1 5 distri butions have almost the same functional differences from previous revisions as the newer revision 1 6 code C 3 Revision 1 6 Revisions 1 6 of the Notesfile system includes a number of changes Numerous bugs in the code were repaired Several functional differences are also evident in this revision of the code Major changes are listed below in chronological order To see what has changed since you received your copy of the code find the first date after you received your distribution and read from there Fall 1983 e Archival techniques are more refined Previous revisions determined the age at which to expire notesfiles from the nfarchive command line Each notesfile now con tains its own expiration threshold This threshold can be set to an arbitrary time 3 days default to the value specified on the nfarchive command line or specify never to archive the notesfile These options allow expiration of the entire net collection of notesfiles with the single command line nfarchive net Shorter duration notesfiles maybe n
10. ____ Compile nfdump with the OLD notes distribution If your version of the software is old enough not to have a copy of nfdump I suggest you either try to adapt the version in the current distribution or using the networking programs nfxmit and nfrev to get the information between the old and new databases Notesfile Reference Manual SMM 10 A 4 _____ Compile nfload with the NEW notes distribution ____ cd usr spool notes mkdir OLD __mv OLD run the following script bin csh f foreach i Is OLD echo i start nfdump old usr spool notes OLD i nfload new i echo i done end echo ALL DONE rm rf OLD You will also have to convert the sequencer information In the utility seq cvt directory there are a pair of programs seqtoascii and seqtobinary To convert the sequencer information ____ make seqtoascii using the OLD structs h and parms h _ make seqtobinary using the NEW structs h and parms h ____ ced usr spool notes sequencer ____ mkdir OLD mv OLD run this shell script bin csh f foreach i Is OLD echo i seqtoascii OLD i seqtobinary i end echo ALL DONE __rm rf OLD If you are going to use the FULLDOMAIN option you may want to go ahead and perform the following steps run this shell script appropriately modified to reflect your domain setup This one refle
11. ____ MAILER The program which will do mailing If you are in a networked environment this mailer should manage to route letters to far away places for you The notesfile system only retains the name of the destination site a path to that site is not kept ____ SUPERMAILER This should be defined if you have an intelligent mail program Intelligent here means that you can edit the letter and other fun things ____ PAGER A program which shows 1 screenful of information at a time ____ WRITE A program which allows online user user communication such as bin write ____ FULLDOMAIN This defines the domain name of your local systems For many USENET sites this should be UUCP Other examples include ARPA and Uiuc ARPA This should not include the system name In the UIUC Computer Science Department we have machines named uiucdcs uiucdcsb and so on our value for FULLDOMAIN is Uiuc ARPA The notesfile code puts things together to yield uiucdcsb Uiuc ARPA as a full domain name for one of our machines Note that you do NOT need to place a at the beginning of the domain name the notesfile software does this for you eIDDOMAIN This switch is for now undefined When defined it indicates the the unique id s associated with notes are to have a system component containing the system name and the string defined by FULLDOMAIN The eventual goal is that this wi
12. and updating of notes in an arbitrarily connected network This document details the use of notesfiles from invocation through intersystem notes exchanges The last chapter summarizes the entire set of commands for easy reference An appendix contains detailed checklists for the installation of a notesfile system 2 Using Notesfiles The notesfile system is invoked with a single command line Most notesfile commands require only a sin gle character like the vi editor Those that require more than one character are terminated by a carriage return 2 1 Invocation Invoke the notesfile system with notes sxi a subsequencer t termtype f nfile topicl topic2 The topic list e g topicl specifies the notesfiles to read Invoking the notes system with NO arguments yields a list of some available topics When more than one topic is specified the user encounters each topic sequentially i e topic2 is entered upon completion of topic1 66 The s switch activates the notesfile sequencer which is discussed in section 2 8 Specify x to use Notesfile Reference Manual USD 11 2 the extended sequencer The i flag selects yet another sequencing mode The a option specifies a particular subsequencer This allows several users sharing a signon to maintain their own sequencing timestamp information The t option directs the notesfile system to use termtype
13. as quickly as possible The two options are not mutually exclusive you can gateway your own articles and allow another site to gate way them When copies of the same article meet on a news system the extra copy will be removed from the network To gateway articles into news you must modify the file usr spool notes utilities net how to tell the newsoutput program how to get to the news system More information on this can be found in the section Copying Notesfiles to News later in this appendix To gateway from the news system to the notesfile system you must arrange to have the news system at the remote site send articles as _ standard input to the program asr spool notes utilities newsinput on your system Information on mapping functions between notesfiles and news how to configure a news sys tem to send articles to a notesfile system and how to have a notesfile system send articles to a news sys tem can be found later in this appendix B 2 Configurations for Sites running News A site running both notesfiles and news will typically perform gateway functions in both direc tions from the notesfile system to the news system and from the news system to the notesfile system In these cases all the operations are local B 3 Gatewaying between Notesfiles and News The two notesfile programs newsoutput and newsinput perform gatewaying between notesfile and news systems Newsoutput takes notesfile
14. checked for validity Nfaccess will add the entry to the access list of the specified notesfiles If an entry for that particular user group or system exists the new access right replaces the old access rights The computed mode is an absolute mode the previous value in the access list if any is replaced with the new mode Any user can run the nfaccess program Nfaccess refuses to modify access lists for any notesfile where the user is not a director The nfaccess program is stored in the notesfile utility directory typically astr spool notes utilities Nfaccess is often used to remedy missing permissions in a number of notesfiles One example is when the notesfile administrator is replaced nfaccess is used to grant director access to the appropriate notesfiles usually most of them As new notesfiles are created the access list can be tuned by placing lists of access rights in the file usr spool notes utilities access template These access rights are added to the default access list of newly created notesfiles Notesfile Reference Manual 5 Summary notes sxi a subsequencer t type nf list i J Everywhere J LL help m q k quit M Q K Quit w out save n TD Leave NOW w out sequencer N Fork Shell B Register suggestion Index Page S S Forward t Last page w Backward X First page Z 13 Read note 13 requires RETURN Z aA Search for author Director options Jump to first unread note
15. d jJ 1 L Like j J leave if nothing unread a n Nest notesfiles A N Nest to this notesfile s archive c o Set oldest date for sequencing D O Set sequencer for today s notes e p Read policy note E T Replot the screen l w Write a note m x X Search for title n Z like D but update sequencer o t Reading anything u w spc Next page of current text W Previous page of text Z Next text p Next text ret Next note T Forward 7 responses 15 8 7 Goto base note Last Response aA Search backwards author c C Copy text to notesfile C w editing d Toggle director msg D Delete if yours e Edit title E Edit text f F Forward notestring to notesfile F w editing onp Y x lt USD 11 26 Index page Next unread text Next unread base note Like j J leave if nothing unread Mail to anyone Mail w text Nest notesfiles Nest to this notesfile s archive Personal note to author P w text Replot current text Rotate text simple decryption Save text Save entire note string Talk to author Write response Search backwards title like TD but update sequencer Delete directors only Director Options Toggle anonymous Toggle archive status Compress notesfile Change expire w dirmsg flag Change expiration threshold Change expiration action Change maximum text article Change director message Toggle network availability Toggle open status Change notesfile title Un de
16. different names Notesfiles are currently limited in the last component of their name to the length of a filename under V7 System MI System V and 4 1 Bsd this is 14 characters 4 2 Bsd extends the length of a filename to a maximum of 255 characters per component Newsgroup names are no longer limited in total length the only restric tion in current news versions is that each component between s is unique in the first 14 characters The file usr spool notes utilities newsgroups defines the relationships between notesfiles and newsgroups Lines in the file have the general form notesfile base_newsgroup respone_newsgroup Lines beginning with the character are considered comment lines The response_newsgroup field and the colon separating it from the base_newsgroup field are optional Entries in this file need be made for only a few reasons 1 The newsgroup which matches the notesfile is longer than fourteen characters 2 the notesfile and the newsgroup are different names e g the notesfile Bnews can be linked to the newsgroup net news b with an entry of Bnews net news b 3 you want several newsgroups linked to a single notesfile and 4 notes and responses from a notesfile should go to different newsgroups net general net followup is one example The file is scanned from the beginning until EOF or a match is found When no match is found the code returns the original argu
17. made from a VAX running 4 2 Bsd In most cases there are only a few files that need to be modified src parms h src Makefile and src newsgate h if you are interfacing to USENET First read in the distribution tape The tape is a TAR format tape This will read in several directories worth of data The sre directory contains all source code for the notesfile system and the internal help files The doc directory contains an nroff source for the user manual and the macros that were used to generate it The man directory contains the nroff sources for the notesfile manual pages The Samples directory is a collection of various system files from our machine they are included to provide examples in setting the matching files on your system After the tape has been read in select the appropriate parameters 3 4 1 Selecting Appropriate Constants Before compiling the notesfile system it must be configured to match your system The location of spool ing directories and command directories the UNIX kernel and policies on non standard software may require changes in the default configuration Configuring the notesfile system is accomplished through modifying two files both in the src directory of the distribution The parms h file contains information on values for the default archival time UNIX kernel type and the behavior of the no
18. notesfiles and see only those notes written since their last reading The notesfile sequencer provides this capability It is activated by the s option sequencer on the command line When the sequencer is activated the notesfile system automatically remembers the last time the user read notes in each notesfile Subsequent entries to the notesfile can use the last time information to show only new notes and responses If there is nothing new in a notesfile the sequencer proceeds to the next notesfile specified in the com mand line The normal sequencer does not give the user a chance to read the notesfile if there are no new notes or responses sometimes it is desirable to be able to do so Use the x option to enable the sequencer and enter the notesfile even if there are no new notes Notesfile Reference Manual USD 11 10 No keys need be pressed if there are no new notes in the entire list and the normal s sequencer mode is selected With the extended x sequencer the user must type q Q or control d for each notesfile regardless of whether there are new notes c6 23 The i mode of sequencing is similar to the s mode Using the i mode notesfiles without new entries are passed over The user starts reading on the index page of notesfiles which contain new notes 2 8 1 Seeing New Notes and Res
19. of its responses to be copied to another notesfile The user is prompted for the destination notesfile The copied note and all of the copied responses contain header information detailing their origin Where f copies the note string without change the F command allows the user to edit the text of Notesfile Reference Manual USD 11 8 the note and each response before inserting it into the target notesfile The c copy command prompts for a destination notesfile then copies the currently displayed note or response to the target notesfile The user is allowed to choose between forwarding the note as a response or as a new base note The c command does not give the user a chance to edit the text before inserting it in the new notesfile The extended copying command C allows editing of the note text before it is copied to the other notesfile Both the c and C commands provide for the forwarded text to be entered as either a new note or as a response to an existing note In the latter case an index page is given to the user for choosing the appropriate note to which to respond 2 6 6 Saving Text in Local Files The s save command appends the current displayed text to a file of your choice which is created if not present Notesfiles prompts for the file name typing only a carriage return aborts the command no text is saved Cap
20. same archive usr spool oldnotes mynotes 3 7 3 Cleaning Sequencer Files A tool to remove sequencer entries for deleted users will be included in future releases of the notesfile package This tool will traverse the sequencer directory removing files belonging to users whose signons no longer exist The process can be made automatic by including an entry in the cron table A second sequencer related utility will traverse the sequencer directory and remove entries for deleted notesfiles A similar user program will be provided to permit users to remove their sequencer entries for notesfiles that they no longer peruse 3 7 4 Additions to System Boot Since the notesfile system maintains several lock files to ensure mutual exclusion of each notesfile a line similar to the following should be added to the etc rc or etc rc local file rm f usr spool notes locks Make sure usr spool notes matches the MSTDIR parameter in the Makefile This line will remove any locks left if the system has crashed 4 Other Notesfile Utilities The notesfile distribution includes utility programs to provide hard copy output additional interfaces to user programs and statistics They are described below 4 1 Hard Copy Output The program nfprint sends to standard output a nicely formatted listing of the notesfile in its command line Its format is nfprint Inn p t topic note note note The
21. specified it skips to the next entry For a description of the format of these files see the section 2 3 The f Option NFSEQ usr essick nfseq pbnotes micronotes NFSEQ pbnotes usr essick nfseq micronotes usr essick other The automatic sequencer uses the s mode of sequencing The user does not enter notesfiles which have no new text By specifying x or i on the command line the user can use the appropriate sequencer mode The subsequencer option of notes is available from the autoseq program by specifying a name on the command line and has identical semantics with use of this option when invoking notes Notesfile Reference Manual USD 11 12 2 9 Environment Variables The notesfile program reads several environment variables to tailor the system to the user s preferences Below is a list of the variables their purpose and their default values These defaults are for UNIX 4 xBSD and may be slightly different for other versions of UNIX e NFED specifies which editor will be invoked when the user writes a note or response If this variable is not specified the notesfile system looks for the environment variable EDI TOR which many other programs use If neither NFED nor EDITOR are defined a default editor is used bin ed e NFSEQ is a list of notesfiles that the user wishes to scan using
22. system prompts for another user Press return at the prompt to exercise other access list options 66099 S The access machinery checks user names before checking group names If user john explicitly has no access but his group does he will nevertheless be denied access to the file If there is no explicit entry for user john a check is made for permissions granted to his group s n b an entry for user Other will match all users circumventing group permissions The behavior typically desired can be achieved with a group Other just as well If no explicit user entry exists a search for group permissions is initiated Users can belong to more than one group although kernels such as Version 7 only allow one at a time and the notesfile code checks each of the user s groups If permissions for several of these groups exist the user is given the inclusive OR of the several per missions If none of the user s groups are given permission a default permission specified by group Other is usually assigned The Other entry matches when none of the other group entries have matched This entry can Notesfile Reference Manual USD 11 14 be deleted in which case no access is granted The current implementation of system access enforcement is naive The network software will send to a system only if it has read permission Reception allows intermediaries to pass on notes even if th
23. to call it 1 7 yet e Each notesfile now enforces its own limit on the size of single notes and responses This is initialized to a default value when the notesfile is created and can be changed from the director options page Articles longer than the permitted maximum are truncated and have a message appended detailing how many bytes were ignored and the name of the site where it occurred eCustomized access lists are generated when each notesfile is created The file usr spool notes utilities access template if it exists is used to modify the default access list when a notesfile is created This file contains ASCII specifications of access rights in the same form as used on the nfaccess Notesfile Reference Manual SMM 10 C 4 command line Lines in this file beginning with are considered comments e Author searching now understands about substrings You no longer have to match exactly an author Thus an author search would find articles written by a user mark on any machine a user hallmark on any machine and any user on the market machine e The notes news interface has been rewritten The news gt notes code now understands all of the USENET standards for B news 2 10 Newsinput understands about the References line The notes gt news code generates articles acceptable to the rest of USENET December 1984 e The nfmail program has been re written to understand about how to link responses
24. 17 minutes on a VAX 11 780 If anything goes wrong perusal of the terminal dialogue should point out the offending steps The most likely cause of errors will be a missing directory To replace the notesfile software any time after these two steps have been run type make install If at some time you are must change some of the internal constants of the notesfile package such as string lengths and blocking factors all the existing notesfiles on your system will be incompatible with the new instantia tion of the program The nfdump and nfload programs are useful for converting the data base from one format to another The nfdump program should be compiled with the old configuration and the nfload program should be compiled with the new configuration Documentation on these programs can be found in the appendices 3 4 3 User Subroutines The notesfile package contains several routines available to users in general The nfabort routine generates a core image places it in a specified place logs the fact in a notesfile and terminates The nfcomment routine allows users to log text in a notesfile These routines are useful for debugging information and communication between program developers and users Users can load these routines by specifying Infcom on the cc or ld command lines The normal installation procedure make install will compile the nfcomment routine and pla
25. Computer henry 9 Personal computers harmful 8 Anonymous 10 Ethernet interfaces 3 mhz 23 essick 11 Requirements for uiucdcs 10 botten 1 1 82 12 Happy New Year 5 mjk The upper left corner shows the notesfile s title In this example the notesfile discusses personal worksta tions The current time and date are displayed in the upper right corner Approximately ten note titles are displayed Gf available More notes are displayed on longer screens such as the Ann Arbor Ambassador Each note is displayed with its date if different from the previous date note number title number of responses if any and author The first note above was written by user horton on December 9th is entitled Stanford SUN and has four responses Note 7 has been deleted for some reason by either its author or a notesfile director Note 5 was written by user johnson whose signon resides on the duke system Note 9 was written by an author who pre ferred to remain unidentified Notes with director messages sometimes denoting importance are displayed with a gt next to the note number see note 3 above From the index page the user may e Scroll the index forward or backward e Read a note e Write a note e Go to the next unread note e Search for notes or responses after a specific date time e Search for keywords within notes titles e Search for notes responses by a specific author e Go to anothe
26. I option specifies an alternate page size the default is 66 The optional note number list specifies that only certain notes of the notesfile are to be printed The list can specify individual notes and ranges The notes are printed in the order specified The p option specifies that each notestring is to begin on a new page The t option signifies that only a table of contents is to be generated 4 2 Piped Insertion of Notes The nfpipe program enters text from the standard input into a notesfile nfpipe topic t title d a The t option allows specification of a title The d and a options specify the director and anonymous flags respec tively if available If no title is specified one is manufactured from the first line of the note USD 11 23 Notesfile Reference Manual 4 3 User Subroutines 4 3 1 Nfcomment The nfcomment subroutine is callable from a user s C program It allows any user program to enter text into a notesfile nfcomment nfname text title dirflag anonflag The parameters are char nfname name of notesfile char text null terminated text to be entered char title if non null title of note int dirflag 0 gt director flag on if allowed int anonflag 0 gt anonymous note if allowed If the text pointer is NULL the text of the note will be read from standard input If no title is specified the subroutine will manufacture a title from the fir
27. Q or control D later will have no effect on the sequencer information for notesfiles already read The o and O commands allow the user to modify the variable used to determine whether notes and responses are new The o command allows the user to set this variable to any date he wishes Use the O command to set this variable to show only notes and responses written that day The last time file kept for each user is never modified by the o and O commands When no more new notes or responses exist both the j and J commands will take the user to the index page To exit the notesfile use the q command Exiting with q will update the user s last entry time Exiting with capital Q will NOT modify the last entry time for that notesfile neither will control D The l and L command behave similarly to j and J The difference is that while j and J take the user to the last index page when no more new notes or responses exist the l and L commands will 6699 leave the notesfile as if a q had been typed Thus when no more new notes exist the l command is like typing 66s 99 Jq 2 8 2 Alternate Sequencers If several people share a login account it is convenient for each to ha
28. Report No UlIUCDCS R 82 1081 NOTESFILE REFERENCE MANUAL by Raymond B Essick IV Rob Kolstad February 14 1983 Revised October 20 1985 Printed May 27 1992 DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA CHAMPAIGN 1304 W SPRINGFIELD AVENUE URBANA ILLINOIS 61801 2987 Supported in part by NASA Project NAS 1 138 1 Introduction Notesfiles support computer managed discussion forums Discussions can have many different purposes and scopes the notesfile system has been designed to be flexible enough to handle differing requirements Each notesfile discusses a single topic The depth of discussion within a notesfile is ideally held constant While some users may require a general discussion of personal workstations a different group may desire detailed discussions about the I O bus structure of the WICAT 68000 a particular workstation These discussions might well be separated into two different notesfiles Each notesfile contains a list of logically independent notes called base notes A note is a block of text with a comment or question intended to be seen by members of the notesfile community The note display shows the text its creation time its title the notesfile s title the author s name some notesfiles allow anonymous notes the number of responses and optionally a director message Each base note can have a number of responses replies retorts further
29. See the section Copying Notesfiles to News for a more detailed explanation of this feature e Binaries are portable With Unix kernels supporting the uname or gethostname system call the code determines the host at runtime The code now also looks for the notesfile owner in etc passwd to dynamically determine the notesuid As an example a local network of Vaxen all running 4 1a Bsd can run the same binary even if the notes user id varies between machines Eventually it would be nice to have a single binary handle all 4 1a Vaxen another for all 4 2 Vaxen a third be adequate for all USG 5 0 3b 20 s This does not mean that distributions will be binary only but rather that a local administrator will be able to compile once and ship copies of the binaries around with a simple shell script eThe rinstall shell script updates the notesfile binaries on a remote system It assumes that the local binaries will work on the remote machine don t rinstall from a Vax to a PDP 11 The script uses the 4 1a rcp and rsh facilities to perform the FTP and set modes on the remote files December 1983 eNotesfiles can be specified as absolute pathnames Commands such as notes some place mynotes are now legal An anticipated modification will allow search rules for notesfiles similar to those command search rules used by many shells e Archives are stored as notesfiles Now t
30. access to each notesfile The access list can allow or deny read write respond and director options to any user group or system Type p permissions on the director options page to enter the access list editor The system prompts for an option m to modify an extant entry d to delete an entry to insert a new entry r to replot the list q to quit editing the access list and capital Q to quit editing the access list and IGNORE ANY CHANGES MADE Delete or modify entries by entry number Scroll the entries using and 66599 1 66399 6699 After typing i to insert a new entry the system prompts for a user type u for user g for group for system The system then prompts for the name of the user group or system Users and groups must be valid names The default access options are then displayed read write answer for responses Use the keys r w a and d to toggle the read write answer and director privileges respectively Some options automati cally enable others e g w for writing automatically enables a for answering It is not possible to remove answer access while write access is enabled The n key will remove all privileges no access Type return or q when the correct options have been entered The
31. ace efficient than B news USD 11 21 Notesfile Reference Manual 3 7 Housekeeping Notesfiles has a number of utilities to manage its data base A number of shell scripts are included with the distribution which invoke the archival programs and trim logging files which otherwise grow without bounds These shell scripts are included in the Samples subdirectory of the notesfile distribution and can be invoked automatically through cron 8 3 7 1 Cleaning up Disk Space When a note or response is deleted a hole is left in that notesfile This makes for quick deletion but tends to leave some disk space wasted The compress option on the director page is one way that this space is reclaimed The nfarchive program see section 3 7 2 also returns unused space Have cron run the nfarchive program weekly to automate space reclamation 3 7 2 Automatic Removal of Notes The nfarchive program archives notes untouched for more than a specified number of days Archived notes and their responses are stored in an archive notesfile Archive notesfiles are typically found in the directory usr spool oldnotes this may vary between installations The archives can be accessed automatically using the N command from the index note and response displays or by explicitly naming the notesfile notes usr spool oldnotes mynotes The notes are deleted after they have been archived After the archival a compres sion of th
32. al machines with differing disk layouts On one the database might live in usr spool notes another host might have the data base in mnt notes By using DYNADIR and moving the notes home directory on various machines only one binary is needed If the notes database lives in the same place on all of your machines a better approach is to use the MSTDIR definition in the Makefile ____ K_KEY When defined the k and K keys act similarly to the q and Q keys respec tively The choice is up to you Defining them allows reading of notes with one hand However some people get aggravated when the miss the j key and hit the k key All the documentation considers the k key to be active ____ BIGTEXT Define this is you want to allow notes longer than 65000 bytes Note that if you have old notesfiles you will have to dump and reload them with the nfdump and nfload programs before the new code will work on them The following definitions are pretty much stock and usually aren t changed ____ NFMAINT This is the name of the notesfile which receives control messages error reports and other notesfile logging functions I do not recommend undef ing this ____ AUTOCREATE When defined network receptions of previously undefined notesfiles will cause the creation of that notesfile If undefined the reception will fail if the not
33. anual 3 1 8 Expiration Threshold The e command allows a notesfile director to modify the notesfile s expiration threshold Possible values include specific numbers of days default and never The value can be left unchanged by not specifying a new value The default value is assigned to new notesfiles directors can change it as needed The notesfile archiving program nfarchive examines the expiration threshold of each notesfile it processes This threshold determines how long a note string must be inactive before it is eligible for archival The Default expiration threshold uses the expiration time specified on the nfarchive command line this is usually 2 weeks Specific ages can be specified The age specified in the notesfile overrides the value on the nfarchive com mand line The Never threshold tells nfarchive that this notesfile is not to be archived 3 1 9 Working Set Size Each notesfile contains a working set of notes The working set is the number of notes left in the notesfile by the nfarchive program When nfarchive runs it determines a maximum number of notes to delete This number is the number of notes written in the notesfile minus the number of holes caused by deletions minus the working set size Nfarchive will leave a working set size of notes in the notesfile if fewer notes existed in the notesfile no notes are archived The working set size ca
34. as the user s terminal type overriding the TERM shell variable The f option directs the notesfile system to read the contents of the file nfile for a list of notesfiles to read See section 2 3 The f Option for more information on the format of this file 2 2 Notesfile Names and Wildcards Notesfiles can be specified in several ways The most common way is to merely give the name of the notesfile such as general These notesfiles typically reside in the directory usr spool notes Notesfiles may also be specified by their complete pathname thus you could also refer to general by its full pathname usr spool notes general Using complete naming notesfiles can be placed anywhere in the filesystem This allows private notesfiles to be stored in personal directories The notesfile system supports pattern matching for names in the same manner as the shell By using the shell meta characters P and the user can specify a number of notesfiles with a single entry To read all the notesfiles that pertain to unix enter the following line the quotes are required to protect the metacharac ters from interpretation by the shell notes unix There are several ways to read the notesfiles test1 test2 test3 and test4 notes test test2 test3 test4 notes test notes test 1234 E
35. ated and the note has been writ ten nfabort terminates with the exit code specified by the exitcode parameter Nfabort generates default values for each of the string parameters if NULL pointers are passed This rou tine can be loaded with a C program by specifying Infcom on the cc command line Notesfile Reference Manual USD 11 24 4 4 Statistics The notesfile system keeps statistics on where notes and responses originate the number of network accesses duplications and orphaned responses Combined with the use of the log maintained by the notesfile net working software monitoring notesfile traffic is quite easy The s option specifies that only a summary is to be produced skipping the individual reports Wildcard constructs with and are recognized by nfstats Invoke the statistics program with nfstats s topicl Typical output is rbenotes on uiucdcs at 6 24 pm May 7 1982 NOTES RESPS TOTALS Local Reads 359 115 474 Local Written 53 55 108 Networked in 0 0 0 Networked out 0 0 0 Network Dropped 0 0 0 Network Transmissions 0 Network Receptions 0 Orphaned Responses Received 0 Entries into notesfile 109 Total time in notesfile 66 57 minutes Average Time entry 0 61 minutes Created at 10 04 pm May 5 1982 Used on 3 days A combined set of statistics is produced at the end of listings of more than one notesfile The statistics are largely self explanato
36. ce it in the library directory As distributed the file is placed in the usr local lib directory To change this modify the definition of LIBDIR in Makefile 3 5 Installing the Man 1 Documentation Install the man 1 pages for the notesfile with the following commands They are best done as super user cd man make install The nroff sources for the documentation will be installed in the directory usr man in subdirectories man1 man3 and mang 3 6 Interfacing to News I The notesfile system interfaces to the news I system The newsinput program parses articles from the news system and inserts them in the appropriate notesfiles The newsoutput program moves notes from the notesfile system to the news system Neither program will move text between the two systems if the notesfile is not enabled for networking see section 3 1 5 Newsoutput will not retransmit articles inserted by newsinput Sites sharing notesfiles can all run both newsinput and newsoutput Appendix B contains instructions on how to interface a notesfile system to a news system Configurations for isolated notesfiles sites notesfile subnetworks mapping between notesfile and newsgroup names and a checklist for the gateway installation are included Since the notes system stores the entire text of a single notesfile in a single file a notesfile system uses less space than the same scale news system The notesfile system is generally more sp
37. closed non networked and no anonymous notes permitted Specify a to permit anonymous notes in the new notesfiles Use o to have the notesfiles marked open for general use and the n option to enable the notesfiles network availability These status flags can all be modified from the directors page at later times Delete notesfiles with rmnf rmnf f topic Each notesfile to be removed must be verified with y after a prompt anything else will leave that notesfile intact Use the f option to blindly remove notesfiles the verification step is bypassed when rmnf is invoked with the f option The file usr spool notes utilities avail notes contains a list of the public notesfiles The notesfile owner should update this file when he creates new notesfiles this file is not automatically updated by mknf and rmnf The contents and format of the file are at the discretion of the notesfile system owner USD 11 17 Notesfile Reference Manual 3 3 Intersystem Notesfiles The notesfile system provides for intersystem notesfiles in an arbitrary connected network Copies of a shared notesfile must exist on each of the systems wishing to read notes for that notesfile The contents are kept in synchrony through occasional exchanges over a network UIUCDCS uses both uucp and TCP IP Notesfiles to be shared must have their network status enabled see director options Duplicati
38. comments criticism or related questions concerning the base note Thus a notesfile contains an ordered list of ordered lists This arrangement has historically been more convenient than other proposals e g trees were studied on the PLATO trademark of Control Data Corporation system The concept of a notesfile was originally implemented at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign on the PLATO system The UNIX trademark of Bell Laboratoris notesfile system includes these ideas with adapta tions and enhancements made possible by the UNIX environment The UNIX notesfile system was designed and implemented by Ray Essick at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign It provides users with the abilities to read notes and responses write notes and responses for ward note text to other users via mail or other notesfiles save note text in their own files and sequence through a set of notesfiles seeing just new text Each notesfile has a set of directors who manage the notesfile they delete old notes compress the file when needed grant and restrict access to the notesfile and set different notesfile param eters e g title director message policy note whether notes authors can be anonymous Some notesfiles con tain correspondence from other computers Like the UNIX USENET notes and responses are exchanged often over phone lines with remote machines The notesfile system provides automatic exchange
39. compose the text you wish to enter then write the text to the disk and leave the editor The system will prompt you for various options if they are available anonymity director message status and the note s title To write a response to a note type w while that note or any of its responses is displayed The same steps used to write a base note should then be followed 2 6 4 Mailing Notesfile Text Both notes and responses can be mailed to other users with optional appended text The capital M mail command gives you the opportunity to edit the text then send it to anyone Its inferior counterpart m allows you to mail a message to anyone To mail to the author of the text use capital P Personal comment 66 499 to send the text and your comments use p for a simple letter To use a specific mail program set the environment variable MAILER If this is not set a standard mail program is used 2 6 5 Forwarding Text To Other Notesfiles There are several methods for forwarding text from one notesfile to another Single notes or responses can be copied with the c or C command while entire note strings can be forwarded with the f and F com mands The f forward command is given when a base note is displayed on the screen When given the P command causes the base note and all
40. ctor read write and response privileges to all notesfiles for handling emergencies and failures 3 1 Director Options The director can e Change the access permissions e Write the policy note e Change the notesfile title and director message e Open or close the notesfile e Allow the notesfile to be networked e Permit or restrict anonymous notes e Compress the notesfile e Change the notesfile s archival parameters e Delete notes and responses e Toggle director message on any note or response The director can delete notes or toggle the director message above them while reading the notes Access other options by typing d on the index page A display like this results USD 11 13 Notesfile Reference Manual Workstation Discussion Your Director Message Here a Anonymous ON Policy Note Exists YES o Notesfile OPEN Next note in slot 1 n Networked YES Deleted Notes holes 0 A Is Archive NO Deleted Responses holes 0 e Expiration Threshold Default E Expiration Action ARCHIVE D Archive with Dirmsg NOCARE W Working Set Size Default D Maximum Text Article 65000 bytes Option Options available on this page include access lists policy note writing title and director messages open close notesfile network enabling anonymous notes notesfile compress and delete a list of notes 3 1 1 Access Lists The notesfile system allows directors to allow or restrict
41. cts the naming at UIUC bin csh f foreach i Sy echo i In i i UUCP In i i Uiuc ARPA end echo ALL DONE You have now converted your notesfile database to 1 7 format Install the new binaries and fire away A 3 Hints on Installing Notesfiles on Multiple Systems Notesfile binaries are portable across similar machines User id s and hostnames are deter mined by examining etc passwd and through system calls To install the Notesfile system on a network of like machines a collection of 68000 worksta tions for example one machine must go through the procedure detailed above A shell script rinstall is included in the notesfile source directory This shell script will propagate copies across the network Rinstall is a simple script that assumes the correct hierarchies exist on the target machines It was SMM 10 A 5 Notesfile Reference Manual written to use the 4 2 BSD rcp and rsh programs to copy files and remotely execute commands Different networking commands will require changes to the shell script To generate the proper hierarchies on other systems copy the Makefile to each of the machines and make both base and spool This will create the proper files and directories for the notesfile system Then return to the master machine and run the rinstall script to send binaries to each of the other machines The Samples directory of the Notesf
42. d indicates protocol 0 Currently only protocols 0 and 1 are supported The notesfile receiving programs automatically switch between pro tocols The command string is a printf control string without quotes with two s entries The first is for filling in the name of the notesfile the second is for the local system name Many entries in the net how file will be to place different paths on the nfrcev and nfxmit commands The default command line is uux z system nfrcev s s for the x entry and for the r entry uux system nfxmit s d s In the following sample from our net how file the host uicsovax is connected via UUCP and the notesfile net working programs live in non standard directories The host etherhost is reachable over a local network and the Berkeley rsh commands can be used to ship data between the local host and etherhost uicsovax x uux uicsovax mnt dcs essick commands nfrcev s s uicsovax r uux uicsovax mnt dcs essick commands nfxmit s d s etherhost x rsh etherhost usr bin nfrcv s s etherhost r rsh etherhost usr bin nfxmit s d s 3 3 4 Notesfile Name Mapping To provide flexibility in the naming of notesfile across systems the network software looks in the directory ast spool notes utilities net aliases for mappings of local notesfile names to remote notesfile names Each file in the directory is named after a syste
43. d this value a call to autoseq will process the notesfiles pbnotes micronotes helpnotes and works with the sequencer turned on The full naming conventions pattern matching capabilities and exclusion described in section 2 2 Notesfile Names and Wildcards are available in autoseq To read all notesfiles with unix in their names and the four test notesfiles test1 though test4 the NFSEQ variable might be defined as NFSEQ unix test 1234 If the first character of an entry in the NFSEQ list is the notesfile system reads the file name following for a list of notesfiles To have the automatic sequencer read the file usr essick nfseq for a list of notesfiles to scan define NFSEQ as NFSEQ usr essick nfseq For this feature to work the file must have group read privileges The notesfile program runs set uid and can not read files which are readable only by the owner The following definitions are also valid The first one reads the notesfiles specified in the file usr essick nfseq and then reads the notesfiles pbnotes and micronotes The second definition will read the notesfile pbnotes those specified in usr essick nfseq micronotes and the ones specified in usr essick other If the notesfile program is unable to read the file
44. e notesfile is performed to recover the space formerly occupied by the archived notes Nfarchive assumes that all months have 30 days and all years have 12 months The format of the nfarchive command line is nfarchive d m or m w f file topic The d option specifies that no archiving is to take place the notes eligible are to be deleted The m option specifies whether to check the director message status before archiving notes Use m to archive notes which meet the age requirement and have the director message on The m option archives notes of sufficient age with the director message turned off If this option is omitted notes are archived on the basis of age only ce The option specifies the age of eligible notes The increment is days The default is determined by the value of ARCHTIME in parms h and is distributed as fourteen days Each notesfile can specify a possibly dif ferent expiration threshold Normally the notesfile will specify default and nfarchive uses the time specified on its command line Ages specified in a notesfile override the times given on the nfarchive command line The w parameter specifies the working set size to use for notesfiles which do not specify a working set size This determines a minimum number of notes to remain in a notesfile If unspecified the default working set size is 0 This value can be changed through the WORKSETSIZE variable in
45. ed articles to 64 kbytes the current version provides for articles up to 4 Gigabytes A constant is used to determine the actual max imum allowed per article Each notesfile can select a maximum text length per article This limit is not allowed to exceed the hard coded limit currently 3 Mbytes Articles exceeding this limit are truncated and a message detailing the count of excess bytes and the system responsible for truncating the text is appended Initially the maximum text length is set to the highest permissible value One reason for lowering the limit is to meet restrictions on the size of network transfers Notesfile Reference Manual USD 11 16 3 1 13 Deleting and Un Deleting Many Articles Type z zap to delete many notes and their responses quickly Enter a list of note numbers or note ranges aa bb separated by spaces Confirm the command with y other responses will abort the command It is economical and prudent to compress the notesfile shortly thereafter Note that deleting notes in a networked notesfile makes those notes unavailable to those who poll your system for new notes and responses The u undelete command performs the opposite function of the z command This command allows you to specify a list of note strings to be un deleted When prompted the director shoul supply the note numbers he wishes to re activate The specified notes are re activated and can be v
46. enotes to the notesfile somenotes with the 4 1 Bsd or later mail delivery mechanism add the following line to the file usr lib aliases The second line shows the general format for asr lib aliases entries which feed a notesfile If the Notesfile utilities are stored in a different directory the path name should be changed appropriately somenotes usr spool notes utilities nfmail somenotes mailaddress usr spool notes utilities nfmail anotesfile 4 7 Modifying Access Rights for Many Notesfiles It is convenient to add entries to a large number of access lists simultaneously The nfaccess program adds an access specification to each of a specified list of notesfiles Nfaccess functions similarly to chmod 1 Nfaccess is invoked as nfaccess lt access right gt notesfile notesfile The access right is formatted as type name mode Type can be any of user group or system capitalized variants are also valid The type specification can be omitted User is assumed in these cases The mode field consists of a sequence of the characters d r w a and n These indicate director read write answer respond and null access respectively Nfaccess requires user and group entries to be valid by looking for them in etc passwd and etc group System entries are not
47. esfile doesn t exist This is used in environments such as USENET where new notesfiles are often created remotely _____ STATS If defined the statistics keeping code is enabled If undefined the notesfile system will not keep statistics Keeping statistics involves no space overhead and relatively little time overhead I recommend leaving this defined ____ FASTSEQ Enables code which fails quickly by determining in an inexpensive operation if there can t be any new articles When there might be new articles a more thorough and time consuming algorithm is used ____ DUMPCORE This defines a subdirectory of the notesfile utility directory where core images generated by internal consistency checks are placed If undefined the errors will be logged but no core image is generated ____ FASTFORK This definition enables a quick forking algorithm which exec s the desired program immediately instead of going through the system III interface It avoids an extra fork Q execl and shell startup costs However some functionality is lost finished editing parms h edit Makefile select BIN The directory where user commands are kept The Makefile will NOT create this directory At UIUC we use usr bin Another common choice is usr local ____ MSTDIR The default directory for notesfiles The Makefile WILL make this directory for you This is typically usr spool notes ____ ARCHDIR Old notes never die they go here ins
48. et jokes can be explicitly set to a few days notesfiles like net bugs can be set to never The remaining notesfiles might be set to default A program expirechange is provided in the utility subdirectory of the distribution to initialize the expiration threshold of existing notesfiles This is recommended because the previously unused field may contain garbage values e A simple program namechange is included in the utility directory to change the name within the data base If you pick up copies of the data base and set them down on other systems this program will change the name of the system the data base thinks it is on for you e Alignment within the notesfile descriptor structure caused me to remove 6 bytes of filler when adding a long to the structure The size of the structure must be Notesfile Reference Manual SMM 10 C 2 constant The program in utility structsizes c prints the sizes of each of the possibly affected structures It would be prudent to compile and execute this program once with the old structure definitions and once with the new definitions to ensure that the structures are the same size Someday a notesfile dump load program will be written that makes this worry disappear e Mapping notes out to the news system is more sophisticated The new scheme allows a notesfile to send base notes to one newsgroup and responses to another news group This is solely for the net general net followup pair
49. ey are not allowed write access to the notesfile the access permission is determined from the originating system of each note or response instead of the site actually delivering the article The name Other capital O matches any system name not mentioned explicitly Many notesfiles allow several users and groups to have read write access a single user to have director access in addition to the notesfile owner and all other users no access When a notesfile is first created a default access list is created The notesfile owner is made director group Other and system Other are both given read write access to the notesfile If the file usr spool notes utilities access template exists it contains a list of access rights to add to the new notesfile s access list The file contains lines of access rights in the format used by the nfaccess program Access rights look like user essick drwa for more information on the format of these entries see the man I page for nfaccess 3 1 2 Policy Note Type w write policy on the director option page to write a policy note just like writing any other note 3 1 3 Title amp Director Messages Change the notesfile title with t the director message with m The system prompts for a new mes sage Typing only a carriage return will not change the old message
50. g on a PDP 11 the i flag It may also be prudent to optimize the code O flag If code size is an issue remove the RCSIDENT definition when defined version control information is included in the binaries and they are correspondingly larger finished editing Makefile ____ may need to become super user at this point ___ type make base and assess its completion It will tell you if all went well If you are merely installing a new version of the notesfile code you should type touch base instead of make base _____ Signon as notesfile owner While remaining super user isn t a fatal flaw at this point it does mean that several default notesfiles won t be generated These can be created by hand if you forget Nothing from this point on including future code updates requires super user privileges ___edsre ____If you are merely installing a new version of the code type touch spool now This tells the makefile that the spool directories already exist _____ make boot This is the final step it should complete with a message that the system is installed An error message when doing the mknf on nfmaint nfgripes probaby means you are still super user Don t sweat it just become notes and type the mknf command line over Everything is now fine ____ You may have to be Super User for the next step depending on the modes of your manual direc tory u
51. generated articles formats them and hands them to the news system Newsinput takes articles from the news system and inserts them in the notesfile system B 3 1 Copying News to Notesfiles The news system maintains subscription lists for each neighboring system The subscrip tion list is stored in the file usr lib news sys on a B news system On an A news system the subscrip tion list is in usr spool news sys News feeds articles to neighboring systems as they arrive In many cases the article is queued for transmission In other cases the article is given to a batching program which collects a number of articles for transfer and sends them to an appropriate un batching program at the receiving end In the case where the notesfile system resides on another machine the news subscription line should be generated similarly to that for a normal news feed with several exceptions The first is that the newsinput program does not understand about batching articles must be sent one at a time Also one must specify the method of transmitting the article To feed the system somesite with news the neighbor will add a line of the following form to his usr lib news sys somesite subscription uux n somesite usr spool notes utilities newsinput Of course networks other than UUCP can be used To forward to a notesfile system on the same machine as the news system create a pseudo site SMM 10 B 3 Notesfile Reference Ma
52. hat a notesfile can be specified by an absolute pathname archives are stored in notesfile format Access to archives can be either by explicit reference or through the new N command which automat ically nests to the archive of the current notesfile e Nfarchive now understands about working sets The working set is the minimum number of notes left in the active notesfile after an archive run e Archive destinations are mapped A file in the notes utility directory utilities net aliases Archive into maps from active notesfiles to their respec tive archives This file contains absolute pathnames usr spool notes somenotes instead of somenotes e The beginnings of permission modes for an archive are there Currently only directors are allowed to write in an archive notesfile Some more work on copying per mission lists and other information particular to the notesfile must be done e The director page now contains information about the number of holes deleted notes and responses in a notesfile This is useful for determining the need to compress a notesfile January 1984 eEach notesfile can now override the nfarchive command line options for archiving deleting expired notes and for expiring notes on the basis of the director message status The director options page offers options to modify these fields The default value specifies using the value supplied on the nfarchive command line
53. iewed as before This command is only effective until a compression of the notesfile after that time the notes are no longer present in the notesfile 3 1 14 Director Options for Notes Directors may put a director message above any note they write There is one single line director mes sage for each notesfile Typical director messages are New Policy This problem fixed or ignored or Eat Flaming Death Fascist Pigs Directors can also toggle the director message on a note being read d for director message A director can delete a note and all its responses or any response while reading 665799 the text of the note or response by typing Z zap this one and confirming with y 3 1 15 Default Sequencer Lists Some users never set up an NFSEQ environment variable specifying the notesfile they wish to see The file usr spool notes utilities Dflt Seq contains a default list of notesfiles Users without an NFSEQ variable receive the notesfiles listed in this file The file can be changed at anytime and will take effect with the next autoseq by a user 3 2 Creation amp Deletion of Notesfiles Only the owner of the notesfile system can create notesfiles Create notesfiles with the mknf command mknf aon topicl The created notesfiles have default status of
54. ile distribution contains example cron scripts for send ing information between a network of systems running notesfiles These shell scripts can prove helpful in setting up notesfile transmissions around your local network A 4 Mail to Notesfiles To use the nfmail program with the 4 1 BSD etc delivermail or the 4 2 BSD usr lib sendmail insert lines of the following form in the file usr lib aliases somenotes usr spool notes utilities nfmail somenotes gripes usr spool notes utilities nfmail problems A 5 The Notesfiles News Gateway The notesfile news gateway may need a little more tickling to convince it to work properly For more information on how to set this up properly see section 3 5 Interfacing to News and look at the file Src newsgate h Appendix B Interfacing Notesfiles to News is another source of infor mation for connecting the two systems APPENDIX B Interfacing Notesfiles to News The News system provides functions similar to those provided by the Notesfile system It is possible to gateway articles between the two systems In USENET a common configuration is for several notesfiles sites to form a subnetwork of USENET and gateway articles between the local notesfile network and the rest of USENET These articles propogate across USENET in the news sys tem Article originating in the news system are gatewayed into the notesfile network When several notesfile netwo
55. ing the text of a long response are the same as those for looking at long notes USD 11 7 Notesfile Reference Manual 66099 Typing space will move to the next page Typing or backspace will display the previous page within the same limitations as for reading notes only 50 pages are kept Press to go back to the first page of the text The options available while reading responses include e Display the next previous or first page of the response eGo to a different response usually the next one e Go to the next unread note response e Reread the base note e Reread the previous note e Return to the index page e Copy the response to another notesfile e Mail the response to someone e Save the response in your file space e Talk to the response s author e Write another response to the note e Search for keywords in note titles e Search for notes responses by particular authors e Delete the response if you are its author or a file director e Edit the response if it is yours and there are no later responses e Fork a shell e Go to another notesfile e Register a suggestion or complaint about the notesfile program e Exit the notesfile program 2 6 3 Writing Notes amp Responses Write new base notes by hitting w while reading the index page The notesfile system will then invoke an editor ed by default use either of the shell variables NFED or EDITOR to change it After the prompt
56. into a notesfile This means nfmail is now a viable way to have your incoming mail handled After a little more work is done it will handle outgoing mail via the p command equaly well e Notes now runs set gid This solves some privilege problems with set uid programs such as signal delivery It also makes it easier for users to kill their jobs Thanks go to Lou Salkind for pointing this out long ago I just took a long time to realize it C 4 Revision 1 7 The long ago promised revision 1 7 of the notesfile code is finally a reality This version incor porates many of the features promised and a few that weren t I thought about merely changing things from revision 1 6 2 to 1 6 3 but there was a change in the database format and I decided a more drastic change in name was called for to match the database format change To upgrade to revision 1 7 from a previous revision even the last 1 6 2 revisions requires a dump load sequence with the nfdump and nfload programs The man pages for these programs give more information on how to carry out this procedure In addition to changing the format of the notesfile database you must convert the format of the sequencer files To do this look at the programs seqtoascii and seqtobinary in the utility seq cvt directory of the notesfile distribution Appendix A also contains information on how to convert the sequencer files and database
57. ital S appends the base note and all its responses The number of lines saved and the name of the file written are printed when the command completes 2 6 7 Deletion Capital D delete deletes a note or response if it is yours and has no subsequent responses Notes already sent to the network can not be deleted by non directors Directors can delete any note or response with the Z zap command 2 6 8 Online Communication Typing t talk attempts to page the author of the current displayed text The Unix write com mand to him her is issued if the author is local and non anonymous If the environment variable WRITE is defined the program it specifies is used to write to the author 2 6 9 Editing Note Titles While reading a base note type e edit to change the note s title provided you are the author of the note or a notesfile director 2 6 10 Editing Notes Responses E allows editing of the text of a note or response It is not permitted to edit an article if it has subse quent responses or if it has been sent to the network If the later responses are deleted it is possible to edit the original text 2 7 Other Commands 2 7 1 Returning to the Index Page Type i index while reading notes or responses to return to the index page 2 7 2 Searching Titles for Keywords While readi
58. ites will run newsoutput and direct the output to the news site by making the appropriate entry in usr spool notes utilities net how for the pseudo site Usenet B 5 News Gateway Installation Checklist The following checklist covers the variables in the newsgate h file which may need to be changed on your system It also mentions which files to modify to automate the transfer of articles between the two systems ___ edit src newsgate h ____ MYDOMAIN This should be set to the domain your site is in Typical domains are UUCP and ARPA ____ DFLTRNEWS The news receiving program This can normally be left as is alter nate news insertion methods can be specified with more flexibility through the net how file ____ EXPANDPATH If defined the code looks in the file specified by PATHMAP for a route to an author s system The code which does this is in src newspath c and expects a particular format in the PATHMAP file You may wish to replace it with code of your own if your data base is in a different format ____ PATHMAP This is the full pathname of the routing tables used if EXPANDPATH is defined finished editing src newsgate h ____ make newsouput newsinput This will recompile the notesfile news gateway pro grams _____ Check usr lib news sys to see that news will be forwarded to the notesfile system _____ Make entries in usr lib crontab to invoke newsoutput occcasionall
59. le Reference Manual USD 11 6 This is note number 15 in the Workstation Discussion file User horton wrote this note at 4 03 pm on December 11th 1981 Two responses have been written The note s title is WICAT 150 If a director had written the note the director message might have been displayed beneath the note s title Director s notes some times contain important information or new policies Since notes and responses can each be up to 3 Mbytes long the display routine breaks text into pages automatically For all but the last page of a long note or response the lower right corner of the display shows the percentage of the note that has been shown For all but the first page of long text the message Continued appears in the upper left portion of the display Use the space bar to see the next page of a long note or response When the last page is displayed the space key functions as the key it proceeds to the next response The and backspace keys back up the display to the previous page Only the first 50 pages of text are managed this way typing from the fifty second page will return to the fiftieth page The key returns to the first page of the note While reading a note it is possible to e Display the next previous or first page of the note e Write a response to the displayed note e Read next note or previous note e Read nex
60. leaves the current notesfile and refrains from entering your last entry time into the sequencer table see section The Sequencer The notesfile system proceeds to the next topic in the invocation list The k and K keys function exactly as q and Q Use control D signoff to leave the notesfile system completely without updating entry time informa tion The z command which functions only when reading notes or responses or when on the index page behaves similarly to control D the user exits the notesfile system immediately but unlike control D updates the entry time information for the current notesfile Notesfile Reference Manual USD 11 4 2 4 3 Shells coy Fork a shell at any time by typing just like many other Unix programs 2 4 4 Comments amp Suggestions Type capital B suggestion Box while on the index page or reading notes to make a comment or suggestion about the notesfile program Your suggestion will be stored in another notesfile reviewed frequently by the notesfile system manager 2 5 The Index Page When the notes system is invoked without the s option the user sees an index of the most recent notes A sample page is shown below Workstation Discussion 2 03 pm Jan 4 1982 12 9 81 2 Stanford SUN 4 horton 3 WICAT 68000 kolstad 4 M68000 1 horton 5 Dolphin 3 duke johnson 12 10 6 CDC Standalone 1 smith 8 IBM Personal
61. lete lots of notes Write policy Change working set size Zap lots of notes Access permission List i insert delete modify user group system eo r3Zgan read access answer access director options write access null access Sgar APPENDIX A Notesfile Installation Checklist A 1 Installing Notesfile Code You can be sure that you have modified all necessary constants in the notesfile system by following this simple checklist _____ change to the notesfile source directory ___tar x reads the notesfile tape ___edsre ____ edit parms h ____ ARCHTIME Default for how long unmodified note strings hang around ____ WORKSETSIZE The default number of notes to leave in a notesfile when archiving _____ DFLTSH This should be left as the Bourne shell bin sh RBE ____ DFLTED The editor to use if no NFED or EDITOR environment variable exists ____ SEQFILE This is the name of a file in the utility directory which contains a list of notesfiles for users without an NFSEQ environment variable The default is probably just fine ____ DFLTSEQ For users without an NFSEQ environment variable and when the file specified by the SEQFILE definition above doesn t exist we finally fall back to using the notesfiles specified by this string The nice thing about having things in SEQFILE is that you don t have to recompile the notesfile software everytime you wish to change the default set of notesfiles instead you edit a file
62. ll be defined Currently there are problems with using long strings for unique identifiers This is related to the old notesfile structure which used a 10 character maximum and didn t check for overflow So for now leave this undefined I m not sure when it will be good to enable this option Select a kernel type for your machine If no kernel is selected the code may compile but most likely will not run ____ PROMPT If you wish the system to give a command prompt Otherwise the notesfile system is promptless ____ USERHOST If this is defined the notesfile system uses the convention user host to indicate where an article originated If undefined the notesfile system uses a host user notation If you are running in an environment which supports Internet style names you may choose to use this ____ DYNADIR When defined the notesfile system will determine the default spool directory notesfiles from etc passwd The home directory for the user notes actually whatever is Notesfile Reference Manual SMM 10 A 2 specified in the Makefile is read from etc passwd and the parent directory is used as the default spool directory Thus if notes home directory is usr spool notes utilities the default directory is usr spool notes This assumes that notes home directory is in the utilities directory This is useful for the case where a single binary will be run on sever
63. lly t is omitted and the notesfile system sends only new notes and responses The r option specifies that the remote notes system should not only receive the current changes but also reply in kind This is useful if the remote system does not automatically run the nfxmit program The a option specifies that articles inserted from the news I system are to be sent also Normally these articles are not sent because the receiver probably has them the primary use of this switch is for sites that do not run news I Using the f switch tells nfxmit to read the file specified for a list of notesfiles to transmit multiple f parameters are permitted and can be freely intermixed with topic parameters Notesfile name pattern matching is performed on both topic parameters and the entries in a file specified by the f option Nfxmit uses uux 1 as a transport and remote execution mechanism Connections using different protocols and mechanisms can be selected in the file usr spool notes utilities net how its format is described in the sec tion Non Standard Links Uux typically permits a limited set of commands to be executed remotely The file usr lib uucp L cmds contains a list of acceptable commands this file should be edited to include the nfrcv pro gram 3 3 2 Network Transaction Log The network software maintains a log of all transactions including time date number of notes and responses
64. m e g pur ee or uicsovax Each of these files contains lines which specify the mapping of local notesfiles to the particular systems notesfiles Lines beginning with in these files are comment lines and are ignored in the matching process Data lines in the files look like local_nf remote_nf If there is no entry for a particular notesfile or the file for that system is missing the local name is used Mapping is performed by the transmission program nfxmit The nfrcv program does not consult this table USD 11 19 Notesfile Reference Manual 3 4 Initial Installation amp Parameters Installation of the notesfile system requires the following e A working familiarity with version 7 UNIX or later and UUCP for intersystem transfers eThe notesfile distribution tape The distribution is already in usr src new notes the user contributed software area in 4 3BSD e A signon for the notesfile owner This signon should be in its own group The notes package runs set gid mixing the notes group with other groups is not recommended e An anonymous signon This signon should be an unused user id The notesfile system prohibits this user id from reading and writing notes e The ability to write into the directories where the notesfile binaries and data base are to live Appendix A Notesfile Installation Checklist is a helpful guide for installing the notesfile system The distribution is
65. ment as if it had matched itself The process is similar to having placed a sentinel line of the form myarg myarg at the end of the file The optional third field in the line is used to send notes and responses from a notesfile to separate newsgroups The net general net followup convention is an example of how this would be used Typically the net general and net followup newsgroups are mapped into the same notesfile To preserve peace with news users responses written in a notesfile net general should go to the news group net followup The following pair of lines will map all news from net general and net followup into the notesfile net general Base notes from the notesfile net general will go to the newsgroup net general responses in the net general notesfile will be sent to the net followup newsgroup net general net general net followup net general net followup The first line maps news in net general to the notesfile net general It also does the mapping from notesfiles to newsgroups The second line maps news from net followup into the notesfile net general Note that the response field is not used in the mapping from newsgroups to notesfiles it is used only for mapping notesfile responses into a different newsgroup To map several newsgroups into the same notesfile place lines of the following form in the newsgroups file somenotesfile newsgroup 1 somenotesfile newsgroup2 If you wish to have article
66. n be changed by the s command from the director page Possible values include default and specific numbers Default specifies that the value supplied during the nfarchive run is to be used explicit values in the notesfile always override values specified on the nfarchive command line 3 1 10 Expiration Action Each notesfile can decide on the destination of expired notestrings The expiration action field takes one of the values Default Archive or Delete Archive and delete specify that expired notes are to be archived and deleted respectively The default entry specifies that the expiration action should follow that specified on the nfarchive command line 3 1 11 Expire With Director Message Notesfiles can decide how to expire based on director message status individually This option can assume four values Default Nocare On and Off The on and off values specify that only notes with the director message on or off respectively are eligible for expiration The nocare value specifies that the director mes sage status is not checked both director and non director marked notes are eligible for expiration Select the default entry to use the value of this parameter as specified on the nfarchive command line 3 1 12 Maximum Text per Article The notesfile system imposes limits on the size of each article Earlier versions restrict
67. ng you can search backwards for keywords appearing in note titles Typing x x is the unknown title prompts for the substring to be found Searching begins at the current note or from the last note shown on the index page and proceeds towards note 1 The search is insensitive to upper lowercase distinctions Use upper case X to continue the search The search can be aborted by hitting the RUBOUT or DELETE key USD 11 9 Notesfile Reference Manual 2 7 3 Searching for Authors The a command searches backwards for notes or responses written by a specific author Notesfiles prompts for the author s name The A command continues the search backwards The author name may be pre ceded by an optional system Abort the search by hitting the RUBOUT or DELETE key The entire name need not be specified when searching for articles by a particular author Author searching uses substring searching Searching for the author john will yield articles written by a local user john a remote user somewhere johnston and any articles from the uiucjohnny machine Author searching is case sensitive 2 7 4 Stacking Notesfiles Sometimes it is useful to be able to glance at another notesfile while reading notes Using n the user can save stack his current place and peruse another notesfile When on the index page or while reading notes response
68. ntries can also be eliminated from the list of notesfiles to look at By prefixing a notesfile name possibly containing wildcard characters with a the notesfiles are excluded from the list to be examined If one wished to look at all of the test notesfiles except test3 one could specify notes test test3 If you use the c shell you will have to escape the the history character notes test test3 These features are available from the normal entry notes and the automatic sequencer entry see section 2 8 Most notesfile programs recognize this format Among those which do not are programs which must receive exactly one notesfile name 2 3 The f Option The f option of the notesfile system specifies a file of notesfile names to read The file consists of lines containing notesfile names nfgripes net unix wizards net general fa telecom USD 11 3 Notesfile Reference Manual The names start at the left margin they are indented here for readability Wildcard characters P and are acceptable in this context Full names such as usr spool notes general are also accepted Notesfiles can be eliminated through the feature as described in section 2 2 The sequencer mode can be changed see section 2 8 by inserting a line of the form S Again this starts at the left margin The s can be any of
69. nual which doesn t exist elsewhere a sitename such as nf_sys works and add a line like nf_sys subscription usr spool notes utilities newsinput Articles arriving at the local system will now be forwarded to the notesfile system By default news articles are placed in notesfiles with the same name To map newsgroups to particular notesfiles see the later section Naming Notesfiles and Newsgroups B 3 2 Copying Notesfiles to News The newsoutput program transfers notesfile generated articles from the notesfile system to a news system The news system does not have to be on the same machine Newsoutput accepts parameters telling it to gateway articles from specific systems or any sys tem Additional options allow backwards compatible headers for older versions of the notesfile software A typical newsoutput invocation looks like newsoutput a notesfile list The a parameter indicates that notesfile generated articles from any site are to be sent to the news sys tem Under no circumstances will newsoutput transfer an article to the news system if it has passed through the news system before Thus if a notes generated article passes from one notesfile subnetwork to another through the news system the article will not be sent into the news system by anyone in the second notesfile subnetwork The notesfile list can contain a mixture of specific notesfiles wild card specifications P P net or
70. on of notes and responses is prevented by the use of unique identifiers Each note and response in a notesfile is assigned a unique number The networking software checks each note as it arrives to see if a copy already exists In the event of duplication the extra copy is discarded and the fact is logged in the statistics and the network log In the hopefully rare event that a response arrives at a system before the base note does the network reception program will generate a foster parent for the orphaned response When the true parent arrives the foster parent will be overwritten A count of orphaned responses received is kept and available through use of the nfstats program see section 4 4 3 3 1 Transmitting Notesfile Updates The nfxmit program gathers the new notes and responses in specified notesfiles and sends them to a specified site The notesfile owner must occasionally enter the following command or have it entered for him by cron to update remote notesfiles with new notes and receive new remote notes nfxmit dsitename t datespec r a f file topic The sitename is the name of the remote site to receive the new notes The remote site should have notesfiles matching those specified by the topic parameter For remote notesfiles with different names see the section below on Name Mapping The optional t specifies that all notes and responses since that date should be sent norma
71. ponses The sequencer always shows the base note of a modified note string whether or not is has been shown before in order to establish the context of the new response s The j command skips to the next modified text note or response If the rest of a particular note string seems uninteresting skip to the next modified note string with the J big Jump command This skips any new responses on the current note string It is common to follow closely only a few note strings skipping others using the J command The last time information is kept in a special file for each user When the sequencer is enabled the time for the notesfile is loaded into a variable and used to specify which notes and responses are new If the sequencer is not enabled this variable is initialized to January 1 1970 The j and J keys use this variable to determine which notes and responses are new If the sequencer is enabled after exiting a notesfile the last time information is updated to the time that the user entered this notesfile The entry time is used rather than the exit time to ensure that all notes are seen including ones written during the just completed session If the sequencer is disabled the last time information is not modified The last time information for a particular notesfile is updated as that notesfile is exited using
72. quick editing of access lists for a number of notesfiles Nfaccess functions similarly to chmod 1 you supply an access right and a list of notesfiles to apply it to The new access right is placed in the access list of each notesfile specified In the event of an existing access right the new right replaces the old one e The code now understands about the extra work it must to to function properly under the 4 2 Bsd signal semantics e Nfabort provides user programs with a means of leaving core dumps in specified places and logging the fact with an arbitrary message in a notesfile The notesfile code itself uses this routine when trapping internal errors e Finally added the I L and z commands from Lou Salkind and Rick Spickelmier The l L pair mimic the j J pair with the exception that when no unread notes are left the 1 L commands leave the notesfile Thus T is almost a jq command e The notesfile exclusion feature first implemented by Salkind and Spickelmier is now in this revision Constructs like notes net net general are possible This example specifies all net notesfiles except net general e Alternate sequencers are now available An alternate sequencer allows users sharing the same signon to maintain separate sequencer files March 1984 e Revision 1 6 2 created Needed some distinction since 1 6 was getting rather long lived and we weren t ready
73. r notesfile e Consult the notesfile s archive e Read the policy note e Check on anonymous and networked status e Register a complaint suggestion about notesfiles USD 11 5 Notesfile Reference Manual e Fork a shell e Exit the notes program e Invoke notesfile director options if the user is a director 2 5 1 Scrolling the Index Page Scroll the index page by lt return gt lt space gt forward one page forward to the most recent page is multiple s backward one page backward all the way is multiple s 2 5 2 Choosing Notes amp Responses While on the index page choose a note to read by typing its number followed by a carriage return This is the only command that requires a carriage return after it Usually the space bar is used to scan text To skip to a particular note or response use the features below While reading a note or advances to the first response of the note The next note is displayed if there are no responses The number keys 1 2 9 advance that many responses If there are fewer responses the last response is displayed The return key skips the responses and goes to the next note Press or backspace to see the previous page of the current note if the page currently displayed is the first the notesfile pro gram displays the first page of the previous note While a response is on the screen the
74. rks exist as subnetworks of a larger news network such as USENET articles written in one notesfile network will be correctly interpreted when arriving at another notesfile network Correctly interpreted includes proper linking of responses to their true parents this is sometimes not possible with articles written in the news system The notesfile gateway code recognizes articles meeting the USENET standards Additionally the A news protocol and older B news protocols are recognized Incoming news notes articles are parsed and placed in the appropriate notesfiles Articles written within a notesfile subnetwork are for matted according to USENET standards and transmitted to the news system B 1 Configurations for Sites without News Sites running notesfiles without the news program have several possible configuations If your site is part of a notesfile subnetwork and you wish to have your articles gatewayed to the news system and the rest of USENET you must find a site who will act as a gateway for your articles The gateway code performs its task in such a way as to allow several sites to gateway the same article into the news system the multiple copies will have identical unique identifiers and one copy will be canceled when they meet on a remote system B 1 1 Sites with no News Neighbors If you have no immediate neighbor running news there is no particular action you should take other than to reassure yourself that some
75. ry 4 5 Checking for New Notes The checknotes program checks the notesfiles specified by the NFSEQ environment variable to determine if there are new notes The exit code is arranged to make the program useful in shell scripts 0 TRUE is there are new notes 1 FALSE otherwise Use the q option to receive a message There are new notes if one or more of the notesfiles have notes responses written since the user s last entry time into that notesfile The n option is similar to the q option with the exception that it yields output when there are no new notes The output of checknotes with the n option is There are no new notes Use v to print the name of each notesfile with new notes responses The s option is suitable for use in conditional expressions in shell scripts no output is generated by this option USD 11 25 Notesfile Reference Manual 4 6 Mail to Notesfiles Some mailers like 4 2 BSD s sendmail allow mail to be directed to specific programs The nfmail pro gram facilitates sending mail to notesfiles The subject line of the mailed letter is extracted and used as the title of the note Nfmail extracts the author s name and system from the body of the letter Subject lines are examined for Re prefixes and if they exist are used in an attempt to link the letter as a reply to an existing base note To send mail addressed to som
76. s type n nest to read another notesfile Notesfiles prompts for the notesfile to read If the notesfile exists the place is marked in the old notesfile and the new one s index is displayed Type any of the standard keys to leave the nested notesfile Both q and Q leave the nested notesfile and return to the previously stacked notesfile Control d signoff causes the notesfile program to exit regardless of the depth of nesting Sequencing is turned off in the new notesfile regardless of its state in the old notesfile The depth of the stack of notesfiles is limited only by the amount of memory available to the user 2 7 5 Accessing Archives As notesfiles grow it becomes impractical to keep every discussion In some cases the old discussions are deleted other cases require these old discussions to be saved somewhere Each active notesfile can have an archive notesfile An archive notesfile contains the old discussions from the active notesfile The archive of an active notesfile is accessed by explicitly naming the notesfile usr spool oldnotes micronotes for example or through the N command from the active notesfile 2 7 6 Policy Note A notesfile director can write an optional policy note to describe the purpose of a notesfile Read the policy note by typing p policy from the index page 2 8 The Sequencer Most users prefer to scan
77. s from the notesfile somenotesfile go to both of the newsgroups insert a line before the above lines to map articles going to notesfiles The result would look like somenotesfile newsgroup newsgroup2 SMM 10 B 5 Notesfile Reference Manual somenotesfile newsgroup 1 somenotesfile newsgroup2 The first line is the one used for articles going from notesfiles to news the newsgroups specification newsgroup newsgroup2 is used on those articles Articles coming from the newsgroup news group1 will fail to match the first line since the program expects exact matching They will match the second line and be mapped to the notesfile somenotesfile B 4 Typical Configurations A typical notesfile subnetwork contains a number of pure notesfile sites and several sites run ning both news and notesfiles In these situations some subset of the sites running both notes and news act as gateway sites The pure notesfile sites don t concern themselves with gateway operations The gateway sites typically gateway all notes generated articles to news Duplicate articles gatewayed at several sites will propogate across the news network When two or more of these articles meet at some site the superflous copy will be removed from the network If none of the sites in the notesfile subnetwork run the news program the gateway site will be one or more of the sites having neighbors that do run news These gateway s
78. site in the notesfile subnetwork is gatewaying notes generated articles to the news system This can be done in one of several ways If the site wants to gateway arti cles specifically from your machine the following command should be executed on that site occasion ally This is typically done through cron 8 newsoutput syoursite notesfile list A more typical arrangement is where the gateway site sends all notes generated articles that arrive on its system into the news system In this case the gateway site will execute a command such as the fol lowing newsoutput a notesfile list A site gate using this command line will automatically gateway articles written at your site and elim inates the need of running a command similar to the first command line B 1 2 Sites with Neighbors running News If a neighboring system runs both notes and news you have the option of gatewaying your own articles or allowing the neighbor to gateway articles for you If the neighbor does not run the notesfile system you must provide your own gateway functions Gatewaying can be done similarly to the site without a news neighbor You can let your Notesfile Reference Manual SMM 10 B 2 articles propogate across a notesfile network to a gateway site which will send them to the news system Another option is to gateway your articles and possibly any notesfile generated articles into the news system at the neighboring site This gets your articles into USENET
79. sr man ____cd man the man page directory for notesfiles _____ make install to install the man I pages for the notesfile system They are placed by default in the directories usr man man1 usr man man3 and usr man man8 _____ Examine the Samples directory for templates of files normally in the notesfile utility directory These files include shell scripts to run through cron 8 which queue network transmissions expire old notes and map between notesfiles and news ____ Modify UUCP s uuxgqt c to allow remote execution of nfrcv This is unnecessary if no notesfile networking will be done or if another remote execution mechanism will be used Some versions of UUCP have a file usr lib uucp L cmds which contains names of per mitted commands Modify etc rc to remove notesfile locks at boot time 4 2 BSD machines might prefer to use etc rc local Add the command rm f usr spool notes locks A 2 Upgrading Existing Notesfile Databases Revision 1 7 of the notesfile system requires converting existing notesfile databases to a new format A set of programs to accomplish this task are included in the distribution The nfdump program converts notesfiles into an ASCII representation The nfload program converts this ASCII representation back into a properly for matted notesfile To convert an existing notesfile database these steps are what I follow
80. st line of the note This routine is useful for error reports user com ments about programs and automatic logging of statistics or internal states This routine can be loaded with a C program by specifying Infcom on the cc command line 4 3 2 Nfabort Nfabort allows users to generate core images of their process save the core image in a known place and log that fact in a notesfile This proves useful for intermittent failures The programmer regularly scans the notesfile and can examine the core dump at leisure Some of the problems of recreating conditions which cause errors are eliminated by this approach Nfabort is callable from the user program It accepts the following parameters nfabort nfname message title cname exitcode The parameters are char nfname name of notesfile char message text string to insert char title title of the message char cname prefix for core image destination int exitcode code for exit The core image is placed in the file specified by concatenating the cname argument and a unique integer the process id of the current process The notesfile specified by the nfname parameter receives a note whose body consists of the text pointed to by message and a line telling the complete pathname of the core image The title of the note is specified by the title parameter After the core image is gener
81. t unread response or note e Return to the index page e Skip to a given response e Delete the note if you are its author or a file director e Edit the note s title if it is yours e Edit the note if it is yours and there are no responses e Copy the note to another notesfile e Save the note in your file space e Mail the note to someone e Talk write to the author of the note e Search for keywords in note titles e Search for notes responses by a particular author e Toggle the director message if privileged e Fork a shell e Go to another notesfile e Make a comment or suggestion about notesfiles e Exit the notesfile program 2 6 2 Reading Responses Response displays are similar to those of main notes with the exception that Response x of y replaces the note s title The first response to note 15 is shown below Note 15 Workstation Discussion koehler Response 1 of 2 11 53 pm Dec 11 1981 Does anyone have any insight about the relative speeds of the Winchester disks available on these systems The previous disk seems to have track to track response times commensurate with reasonably fast 8 floppies I wonder if some of the manufacturers are using disks that will not meet reasonable specifications for response time for these kinds of applications On the other hand with intelligent layout of file sectors the I O system could romp and stomp on often used files The commands for manipulat
82. tead the Makefile WILL make this directory for you _____ NET This is the directory where the notesfile networking programs nfxmit and nfrev will be placed In most cases usr bin is a good choice You may wish to change it if your UUCP or other networking mechanisms use other directories This directory must already exist the Makefile will not create it AUTOSEQ The invocation name for the automatic sequencer For multiple names like autoseq readnotes and autonotes make links to the file usr bin notes with the appropriate names assuming that BIN usr bin NOTES The username of the user who owns all the notesfiles ____ NOTESUID The numeric userid of the notesfile owner For example NOTES notes SMM 10 A 3 Notesfile Reference Manual NOTESUID 10 ____ NOTESGRP The name of the group to which the NOTES signon belongs It is strongly recommended that this be a special group just for the notes database and programs ____ ANON The name of the anonymous user ____ ANONUID The numeric userid of the anonymous user this should be an idle user id since it is not allowed to run the notesfile program _____ LIBDIR The directory to contain libnfcom a a user accessible library of routines This is dis tributed as usr local lib ____ CFLAGS You may wish to arrange for split I D loadin
83. tesfile system such as whether to keep core images when the notesfile system detects an internal error The Makefile file contains definitions of the spooling and command directories the notesfile owner and the anonymous user The distribution is configured for a UNIX 4 2 BSD system The most frequently changed values after the kernel definition are the notesfile owner and the location of spooling and command directories Appendix A Notesfile Installation Checklist details each of the options in parms h and Makefile It describes the meaning of the option and the effects of changing the value The recommended method for choosing an appropriate configuration is to sit at a terminal with the checklist and mark each option as it is selected or rejected 3 4 2 Compiling the Notesfile System After all the appropriate parameters are set up the next step is to generate the notesfile system First the requisite directories and files in usr bin or wherever should be manufactured This procedure should be run exactly once and will probably have to be run by the superuser To make these files type make base The next phase should be run while signed in as the notesfile owner Type Notesfile Reference Manual USD 11 20 make boot If all goes well this should end with a message to the effect that the notesfile system has been installed approximately
84. the automatic sequencing entry to notesfiles The use of this variable is described in the section on sequencing If unspecified the system uses a standard set which usually includes general and net general e PAGER is the paging program more pg which is used for scrolling the help files The default paging program is usr ucb more e MAILER determines the mail program to use This defaults to usr ucb mail e WRITE is used to specify the program for communication between users If undefined the Unix program write is used e TERM determines the type of terminal in use This must be set for notes to know what screen handling conventions to use In most cases the value will be correctly initialized by the sys tem at login time e SHELL specifies which shell the user is running This will almost always be set by the operat ing system 3 Managing Notesfiles The notesfile system is installed by a user who is known as the owner of the notesfiles UIUCDCS uses user notes This user can create delete rename and initiate networking of notesfiles Each notesfile is assigned a set of directors who may or may not be associated with owner of notesfiles The directors have special privileges for managing the notesfile see below The owner rarely manages the day to day aspects of a notesfile although he has dire
85. transferred direction of transfer and number of notes replicated by transfer This log is placed in a file called net log and resides in the notesfile utility directory by default usr spool notes utilities Notesfile Reference Manual USD 11 18 This file will grow without bounds Occasional pruning is a good idea There is no vital information stored in this file its purpose is to provide a network audit trail 3 3 3 Non Standard Links Some systems will be unable to keep the notesfile network software in a public directory such as usr bin Other sites will have non uucp links The net how file is for these cases Net how is kept in the notesfile utility directory usr spool notes utilities and contains information on linking to remote systems Entries in the file are made for systems with non standard links and have the following format system direction protocol command string The system field contains the name of the remote system The direction field contains either an x or r no quotes and specifies the direction that the line is for An x specifies that the command string is for sending notes to the remote site an r specifies that the command string is used in coercing the remote system to send its new notes and responses back Lines beginning with a are comment lines and ignored by the notesfile code The protocol field is either empty or contains an integer value An empty fiel
86. ve a set of sequencing timestamps This is accomplished through the use of the subsequencer option of notesfiles Specifying the a option and a subsequencer name causes notes to use a different sequencing timestamp file Many different subsequencer names can be used with each login account The main sequencer file for a given account is distinct from each of its subsequencer files Each of the sub sequencer files is normally distinct If the subsequencer names are not unique in their first 6 characters subse quencer files may collide USD 11 11 Notesfile Reference Manual 2 8 3 Automatic Sequencing An alternate entry to the notes program allows the user to invoke notes with the sequencer enabled and a list of notesfiles to be scanned with a single simple command The autoseq command is invoked by typing autoseq and reads the environment variable NFSEQ to find the names of all notesfiles to be scanned On some systems the autoseq command may be known as readnotes autonotes or some similar variant substitute the appropriate name in the following paragraphs The NFSEQ variable should be defined in profile for Bourne shell users as follows NFSEQ pbnotes micronotes helpnotes works export NFSEQ For users of the C shell the following line should be added to the login file setenv NFSEQ pbnotes micronotes helpnotes works With NFSEQ assigne
87. y We use every 6 hours ______ If the news system is on another machine or in a non standard place modify usr spool notes utilities net how Add a _pseudo site Usenet which specifies how to get to the remote machine One example is Usenet x uux z neighbor usr bin rnews _____ Check usr spool notes utilities newsgroups A sample of how this file will look is included in the Samples directory of the distribution ____ Everything should be configured now You will probably want to run several tests on Notesfile Reference Manual SMM 10 B 6 local or limited distribution newsgroups to satisfy yourself that it works APPENDIX C Distributed Revisions of the Notesfile System Several revisions of the Notesfile System are available This appendix attempts to describe the differences between each revision and the previous one C 1 Previous Revisions The Notesfile System was first distributed in June 1982 Since then it has gone through a number of internal revisions and several major revisions The initial 1 0 revision had numerous bugs in the code and inadequacies for interfacing with the news system Release 1 3 the most recently announced release became available in March 1983 Revisions are maintained with the RCS system Major releases are number 1 1 1 2 1 3 1 x Internal modifications are numbered off of the base revision Internal revisions between 1 2 and 1 3 are of the form 1 2 1 x

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