ASH
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First, you need a Linux shell account. If you have a non-Linux shell, a lot of this is probably applicable, but I'm only aiming for testing under Linux. I am aiming this at someone who knows the very basics. I assume you have and use tcsh on your system. Most systems have it (to check, 'which tcsh' , if you have it, then 'chsh' enter your password, and type in the path that which told you lead to tcsh). anytime when in a list of "things you should type" and there is a Ctrl_X that means you should push 'X' while holding the control key... tough stuff, huh?

Now, you have a shell account, next you need to be able to post news. Download  http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/news/transport/suck-4.2.1.tar.gz  and type

tar -zxf suck-4.2.1.tar.gz
cd suck-4.2.1
./configure && make
mkdir ~/bin
cp rpost ~/bin/.
make sure that ~/bin is in your path. To do this, type 'echo $PATH' If you don't know how to then do 
cat >> ~/.tcshrc
set path=( . ~/bin /usr/local/bin /bin /usr/bin /usr/X11/bin \
/usr/sbin /sbin )
ctrl_d
exec tcsh
you should have no problems... if so, learn how to fix your shell on your own... if you really don't want to do that, then simply replace 'cat > ~/.tcshrc' for 'cat >> ~/.tcshrc' (hint: look at the number of "greater than" signs...) ... if you still have problems, get a working version of tcsh/fix /etc/csh.login ... I'm not gonna mess with an already non-working system

now that you have rpost working, it is now time to write your bye-bye note to ash. Use whatever text editor you want, or simply 'cat > goodbye' followed by your text and a Ctrl_d . You must stick to a certain form for your article. Below is example text

----------------------------
From: you@whereever.com
Newsgroups: alt.suicide.holiday
Organization: Mt. Dew worshipers of america
Subject: fill in subject here

How you simply place your message, and sign it...

    -c
---------------------------

of course, you change the fields after From: to your liking... you must have a Subject: and Newsgroups: (and I think a From: though i'm not sure).

how about a test message... replace alt.suicide.holiday with alt.test (do not use a valid From: unless you like lots of spam) and save it as outfile. Then type 

rpost [your news server] < outfile
(feel free to switch file names) where you replace the contents of the bracketed statement (including the brackets) with the name of your news server. For me, my nntp server is called 'news' and thus I do 'rpost news < outfile Go make sure that everything posted right. As this works for me, I will assume it works for you. 

Now, we know that your command works, now we have to work thru the wonders of cron. Let's double check that you *have* cron. Type 

crontab -l
It should return something like 'no crontab for coffee' or whatever your username is. You should now edit a file, and make it follow this form 
Min hour day month * /home/username/bin/myfoo
where in this case /home/username/bin/myfoo is a file with the contents 
#!/bin/tcsh
/home/username/bin/rpost news < /home/username/outfile
where outfile is the file you wish to send. Note that you must make myfoo executable. To do this type 
chmod 755 myfoo
in the same directory as myfoo. Ok, how about editing outfile to go to alt.test, and then try 
exec tcsh;myfoo
this should post a message to alt.test. make sure that you get it. Now, lets say that it I want to send a test message on 5/27 at 1:50 then the file 'cron' would look like 
50 1 27 5 * ~coffee/bin/myfoo
then one would simply run 
crontab cron
and then wait until 1:50 and make sure that the post was actually sent. By simply changing file names around, hopefully this should make it easy to send a delayed news posting.

Everything that I've said works perfectly well for me. The system that this was tested on was based of slackware 3.2

-Coffee

Last update: Sunday, June 20, 1999 14:36

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