The Usenet

One of the older and still popular services available on the Internet is a bulletin board service known as netnews. Netnews is transmitted over the Internet using the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP). The network of computers that share netnews, over the Internet or otherwise, is known as the Usenet (User’s network). Computers at schools, companies, government agencies, and research laboratories in countries throughout the world participate in Usenet.

The collection of programs used to share information is called netnews, and messages are known as news articles. Netnews software is freely distributed to anyone who wants it. News articles containing information on a common topic are posted to one or more newsgroups.

Usenet Background

The original netnews software was developed in 1979 by Truscott and Ellis to exchange information via an old networking program called uucp, between Duke University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Interest in netnews spread after a 1980 USENIX talk, with many other sites joining the network soon afterward. Versions of netnews software were developed at Berkeley making it easier to read and post articles and to organize newsgroups, and making it possible to handle many sites.

Traditionally, netnews articles were read using one of several different software programs called newsreaders designed especially for this task. However, with the advent of web browsers (the software designed for displaying web pages), new ways of accessing netnews are now possible. For example, a web browser can be used to receive and to post netnews articles. Furthermore, news articles are now commonly available as web pages, making it possible to access them exactly in the same way as any web page. There is also a web site called Google Groups that you can access to read archived netnews articles-see later in this chapter for details.

How Usenet Articles Are Distributed

In the past, systems used dial-up connections and UUCP software to exchange netnews. However, in recent years more and more systems use existing networks and their communications protocols, such as the Internet with TCP/IP, for news exchange; the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) is used in this case. A group of backbone sites forward netnews articles to each other and to many other sites. Individual sites may also forward the netnews they receive to one or more other sites. Eventually, the news reaches all the machines on the Usenet. Often news has to travel through many different intermediate systems to reach a particular machine.

How Newsgroups Are Organized

Netnews articles are organized into newsgroups. There are literally thousands of different newsgroups, organized into main categories. These categories are either topic areas, institutions, or geographical areas. The names of all newsgroups in a category begin with the same prefix. Some articles on the Internet are distributed worldwide, while others are only distributed in limited geographical areas or within certain institutions or companies. Table 10–1 shows some of the prefixes for the largest categories used for posting netnews worldwide.

Table 10–1: Some Popular Newsgroup Prefixes

Classification	Content
comp	Computing
news	Netnews and the Usenet itself
rec	Recreation
sci	The sciences
soc	Social issues
humanities	Humanities issues
talk	Discussions (talk)
alt	Alternative topics (wide topic area)
misc	Miscellaneous (everything not fitting elsewhere)

An example of a prefix used for newsgroups within a particular institution is att, which is used by AT&T for its internal newsgroups. Examples of prefixes used for newsgroups for specific geographical areas include nj, for articles of local interest in New Jersey, ca, for articles of local interest in California, and ba, for articles of local interest in the San Francisco Bay Area. Hundreds of different prefixes are used for local and special-purpose newsgroups.

Individual newsgroups are identified by their category, a period, and their topic, which is optionally followed by a period and their subtopic, and so on. For instance, comp.text contains articles on computer text processing, comp.unix.questions contains articles posing questions on the UNIX System, and rec.arts.movies.reviews contains movie reviews.

Identifying Available Newsgroups

You will be able to read netnews only in those newsgroups your machine knows about (unless you access netnews via the web-more about that later). To get a list of newsgroups your machine knows about, look for the file /usr/lib/news/newsgroups and print it out. Table 10–2 includes some of the most popular newsgroups (other than those devoted to sex!), other representative newsgroups, and newsgroups with wide distribution, along with a description of their topics.

Table 10–2: Some Popular Newsgroups and Their Topics

Newsgroup	Topic
comp.ai	Artificial intelligence
comp.databases	Database issues
comp.graphics.animation	Animated computer graphics
comp.lang.c	The C programming language
comp.misc	Miscellaneous articles on computers
comp.sources.unix	Source code of UNIX System software packages
comp.text	Text processing
comp.unix.questions	Questions on the UNIX System
misc.consumers	Consumer interests
misc.forsale.non-computer	Want ads of items other than computers for sale
misc.misc	Miscellaneous articles not fitting elsewhere
misc.wanted	Requests for things needed
news.announce.conferences	Announcements on conferences
news.announce.newusers	Postings with information for new users
news.answers	FAQs for different newsgroups
news.lists	Statistics on Usenet use
rec.arts.movies.current-films	Discussions on recent movies
rec.audio.marketplace	High-fidelity equipment want ads
rec.autos.tech	Technical aspects of cars
rec.birds	Bird watching
rec.gardens	Gardening topics
rec.humor	Jokes
rec.photo.misc	Photography and cameras, other than want ads or darkroom topics
rec.travel.europe	Traveling throughout Europe
sci.crypt	The use and analysis of cipher systems
sci.math	Mathematical topics
sci.math.symbolic	Symbolic computation systems
sci.misc	Miscellaneous articles on science
sci.physics	Physics, including new discoveries
soc.singles	Single life
soc.women	Women’s issues

Reading Netnews

Netnews can be read using a traditional newsreader or in combination with the newsreader software built into most popular web browsers. You can also read netnews using a web browser by accessing certain web sites. There are many traditional newsreaders, some of these that have been or are widely used are readnews, vnews (visual news), rn (read news), trn (threaded read news), and tin (threaded Internet newsreader). These newsreading commands are described in the following discussion.

The .newsrc File

The programs for reading netnews use your .newsrc file in your home directory, which keeps track of which articles you have already read. In particular, the .newsrc file keeps a list of the ID numbers of the articles in each newsgroup that you have read. When you use one of the programs for reading news, you see only articles you have not read, unless you supply an option to the command to tell it to show you all articles. Ranges of articles are specified using hyphens (to indicate groupings of consecutive articles) and commas. The following is a sample .newsrc:

 $ cat  .newsrc misc.consumers: 1-16777 news.misc: 1-3534, 3536-3542, 3545-3551 rec.arts.movies: 1-22161 sci.crypt: 1-2132 sci.math: 1-7442, 7444-7445, 7449, 7455 sci.math.symbolic: 1-782 rec.birds: 1-1147 rec.travel: 1-8549 comp.ai: 1-4512 comp.graphics: 1-5695 comp.text: 1-4690 comp.unix.aix! comp.unix.questions: 1-16142 comp.unix.wizards: 1-17924 misc.misc: 133, 160-162 misc.wanted: 1-8119, 8125, 8131 news.announce.conferences: 1-699

You can edit your .newsrc file if you want to reread articles you have already seen. To do this, use your editor of choice to change the range of articles listed in the file so that it does not include the numbers of articles that you want to read. You can also tell netnews that you are not interested in a particular newsgroup by replacing the colon in the line for this newsgroup with an exclamation point; this “unsubscribes” you to this newsgroup; the exclamation point tells the netnews program to skip this newsgroup when you read news. (In the preceding example, note the exclamation point after the newsgroup comp.unix.aix.)

Using readnews

Although readnews is the oldest program for reading netnews and primarily uses a line-oriented interface, some people still use it. When you enter the readnews command, you see the heading of the first unread article in the first newsgroup in your .newsrc. For example,

 $ readnews ------------------ Newsgroup sci.math ------------------ Article 3313 of 3459  Mar 29 19:22. Subject:  New Largest Prime Found From:  galoisparis.UUCP (E. GaloisUniv Paris FRANCE) (110 lines)  More? [ynq]

The header in the preceding example tells you that this is article number 3313 of 3459 in the newsgroup sci.math. You see the date and time the article was posted, and the subject as provided by the author. The electronic mail address of the author and the author’s name and affiliation are displayed. Finally, you are told that the article contains 110 lines. You are then given a prompt. At this point, you can enter y to read the article, n not to read it and to move to the next unread article (if there is any), or q to quit, updating your .newsrc to indicate which new articles you have read. Besides these three possible responses, there are many others. The most important of these other commands is x, which is used to quit without updating your .newsrc. Some of the other available readnews commands are listed in Table 10–3.

Table 10–3: Some readnews Commands

Command	Action
r	Reply to the article’s author via mail
N [newsgroup]	Go the next newsgroup or the newsgroup named
U	Unsubscribe to this newsgroup
s [file]	Save article by appending it to the file named; default is file Articles in your home directory
s | program	Run program given with the article as standard input
!	Escape to shell
<number>	Go to message with number given in current newsgroup
–	Go back to last article displayed in this newsgroup (toggles)
b	Go back one article in this newsgroup
I	List all unread articles in current newsgroup
L	List all articles in current newsgroup
?	Display help message

You can use the -n option to tell readnews which newsgroup to begin with. For instance, to begin with articles in comp.text, type

 $ readnews -n comp.text

You may also want to print all unread articles in the newsgroups that you subscribe to. You can do so using this:

 $ readnews -h -p > articles $ lp articles

The -h option tells readnews to use short article headers. The -p option sends all articles to the standard output. Thus, the file articles you print using lp contains all articles, with short headers.

Using vnews

In the same way that many users prefer using a screen-oriented editor, such as vi, to a line-oriented editor, such as ed, many users prefer using a screen-oriented netnews interface. The vnews program provides such an interface. The vnews program uses your screen to display article headers, articles, and information about the current newsgroup along with the article you choose to read.

When you type vnews, you begin reading news starting with the newsgroup found first in your .newsrc file if this group has unread news. (If you do not have a .newsrc file, vnews creates one for you.) You can specify a particular newsgroup by using the -n option. For instance, the command

 $ vnews -n comp.text

can be used to read articles in the newsgroup comp.text.

You will be shown a screen containing the header of the first unread article in this group, as well as a display on the bottom that shows the prompt, the newsgroup, the number of the current article, the number of the last article, and the current date and time. (The format of the header depends on the particular netnews software being used.) An example of what you will see is shown in Figure 10–1.

 Newgroup comp.text (Text processing issues and methods) Article <[e-mail]> May 31 13:18 Subject: special logic symbols in troff Keywords: troff, logic From: [e-mail] (k.h. rosen@AT&T Laboratories) (23 lines) more?          comp.text 484/587        Oct 1 17:13

Figure 10–1: Using the vnews command

You can see a list of vnews commands by typing a question mark at the prompt. Some commonly used commands are listed in Table 10–4.

Table 10–4: Some Commonly Used vnews Commands

Command	Action
ENTER	Display next page of article, or go to next article if last page
n	Go to next article
r	Reply to article
f	Post follow-up article
CTRL-L	Redraw screen
N [newsgroup]	Go to next newsgroup or newsgroup named
D	Decrypt an encrypted article
A	Go to article numbered
q	Quit and update .newsrc
x	Quit without updating .newsrc
s [file]	Save the article in file in home directory; default is file Articles
h	Display the article header
	Go to previous article displayed
b	Go back one article in current newsgroup
!	Escape to shell

For instance, to read the current article, either press the SPACEBAR or the ENTER key. The contents of the article will be displayed, and the prompt “next?” will appear.

Using rn

The rn program for reading netnews articles has many more features than either readnews or vnews. For instance, rn allows you to search through newsgroups or articles within a newsgroup for specific patterns using regular expressions. Only basic features of rn will be introduced here; for a more complete treatment, see one of the references described at the end of this chapter.

To read news using rn, enter this command, optionally supplying the first newsgroup to be used:

 $ rn comp.unix Unread news in comp.unix             23 articles Unread news in comp.unix.aux          3 articles Unread news in comp.unix.cray        12 articles Unread news in comp.unix.questions  435 articles Unread news in comp.unix.wizards     89 articles and so forth ********  23 unread articles in comp.unix-read now? [ynq]

If you enter y or press the SPACEBAR, you begin reading articles in this newsgroup. However, you can move to another newsgroup in many different ways, including the commands displayed in Table 10–5.

For instance, to search for the next newsgroup with the pattern “wizards,” use the following:

 ******** 23 unread articles in comp.unix--read now? [ynq] /wizards Searching... ******** 89 unread articles in comp.unix.wizards---read now? [ynq]

Table 10–5: Some Newsgroup-Level rn Commands

Command	Action
n	Go to next newsgroup with unread news
p	Go to previous newsgroup with unread news
−	Go to previously displayed newsgroup (toggle)
I	Go to first newsgroup
$	Go to the last newsgroup
gnewsgroup	Go to the newsgroup named
/pattern	Scan forward for next newsgroup with name matching pattern
?pattern	Scan backward for previous newsgroup with name matching pattern

Once you have found the newsgroup you want, you start reading articles by entering y. You can also enter=to get a listing of the subjects of all articles in the newsgroup. After you enter y, the header of the first unread article in the newsgroup selected is displayed as follows:

 ******** 89 unread articles in comp.unix.wizards read now? [ynq] y

You obtain the first article, which will look something like this:

 Article 5422 (88 more) in comp.unix.wizards From: fredjersey.att.com (Fred Diffmark AT&T Laboratories) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.questions Subject: new Solaris real time features Keywords: Solaris, real time Message-ID: Date: 2 Mar 99 Lines: 38 --MORE--(19%)

You enter your command after the last line. Some of the many choices are displayed in Table 10–6. The commands in Table 10–6 let you read the current article, find another article containing a given pattern, or perform one of dozens of other possible actions.

Table 10–6: Some Article-Level rn Commands

Command	Action
SPACEBAR	Read next page of article
ENTER	Display next line of article
CTRL-L	Redraw the screen
CTRL-X	Decrypt screen
n	Go to next unread article in newsgroup
P	Go to previous unread article in newsgroup
q	Go to end of article
−	Go to previously displayed article (toggle)
^	Go to first unread article in newsgroup
g pattern	Search forward in article for pattern specified
s file	Save article to file specified
number	Go to article with number specified
$	Go to end of newsgroup
/pattern	Go to next article with pattern in its subject line
/pattern/a	Go to next article with pattern anywhere in the article
/pattern/h	Go to next article with pattern in header
?pattern	Go to first article with pattern, scanning backward
/	Repeat previous search, moving forward
?	Repeat previous search, moving backward

The rn has many more sophisticated capabilities, such as macros, news filtering with kill files, and batch processing.

Using trn

Instead of using rn to read netnews, you may want to use trn, a threaded version of rn developed by Wayne Davison. This newsreader is called threaded because it interconnects articles in reply order. Within a newsgroup, each discussion thread is represented as a tree where reply articles branch off from the respective originating article that they are a reply to. A representation of this tree, or part of it if it is too large, is displayed in the article header when you read articles.

Many people prefer using trn because it lets them work through trees of threaded articles, reading an article, replies to this article, replies to these replies, and so on. If you typically use rn, you may want to try trn (keep the manual pages for trn at your side when you first begin using it). Because trn is an extension of rn, we will not cover it in detail here, but we will briefly describe how articles in a newsgroup are presented and organized when you use this newsreader.

When you tell trn you want to read the articles in a particular newsgroup, you are presented with the overview file for this newsgroup one page at a time, showing threads of articles from that newsgroup, as you’ll see in Figure 10–2.

 sci.math                               818  articles a+ Carl Gauss                          3   Quadratic reciprocity    Lenny Euler    Adrian L. b  A1 Einstein                         2   Relativity theory    P.W. Herman d  D. Hilbert                          1   >1+1=0 e+ Sonya K.                                Klein bottles    Mr. Mobius    Gwendolyn G.    Deborah Z. - - Select threads  (date order) - - (Top 1%) [>Z] 

Figure 10–2: An example file overview trn screen

This screen shows us that the newsgroup sci.math has been selected and that there are 818 unread articles in this newsgroup. We see four threads displayed, identified by the letters a, b, d, and e (c is skipped because it is a trn command). To select threads, you type the letter of the thread. For instance, here the letter a was entered, which caused the first thread to be selected. Similarly, the letter e was typed, selecting the fourth thread of the screen. (Also note that at the bottom of the screen, we’re told that we have seen the top 1 percent of articles.) For more information about trn, enter

 $ man trn

Using tin

Another widely used threaded news reader is tin, short for threaded Internet newsreader. When you start tin, you are presented with a list of the newsgroups you are subscribed to, with the number of articles that you have not yet read in a newsgroup displayed to the left of the newsgroup name. At this stage, you are at the newsgroup-selection level. To read the articles in one of these newsgroups, move your cursor to the name of this newsgroup and press the ENTER key You will then see a list of subjects, each representing a thread consisting of one of more articles, as well as responses to these articles. At this stage, you are at the subject-selection level. To see a summary of the articles in a subject, move your cursor to the thread and press the L key (short for list). This brings you to the article-selection level.

To return to the list of subjects, press the Q key. To begin reading the articles in a subject, position the cursor over this subject and press the ENTER key or type the number of this subject, which you will see to the left of the subject name, and press the ENTER key Use the TAB key to move to the next article in a thread and press the ENTER key to display the initial article in the next subject area. To respond to article and add to its thread, press the F key This will give you the opportunity to create your response. Once you have read all the articles that you want in a newsgroup, pressing the c key will mark all articles in that newsgroup as read; these articles will not be displayed the next time you read netnews. At any point, you can press the H key to see all commands available to you at that point. For more information about tin, go to http://www.tin.org or consult its manual page by entering

 $ man tin

Using a Web Browser to Read Netnews

Instead of using a newsreader to read netnews, you can use a program that comes with your web browser. Web browsers usually provide an easy-to-use interface for reading netnews. Using your browser, you can find and subscribe to newsgroups, read and select messages, thread messages, filter messages, reply to messages and post new ones, and do many other things.

Among the benefits to using a web browser for netnews is that newslists and related lists can be categorized logically on a web page, with other linked pages containing similar items accessed as a hot link. Another benefit is that the display of netnews lists can be altered to be more appealing than the normal lists generated for a newsgroup. For details see Internet: The Complete Reference, second edition, listed at the end of this chapter.

Using Google Groups to Read Netnews Articles

Another way to access netnews articles is to use Google Groups at http://groups.google.com/. Google Groups maintains an incredibly large and comprehensive archive of more than 1 billion Usenet postings dating back to 1981. Using Google Groups, you can locate newsgroups whose names and/or descriptions match keyword searches and search for articles in newsgroups that contain a particular word or phrase. You can also browse all the articles in a particular newsgroup. Google Groups also allows you to create you own new newsgroup. Google Groups incorporates the original archive of Usenet articles previously supported by the defunct Deja News service.

Posting News

Many programs that are used to read netnews can also be used to post news articles. For example, you can post news articles when using tin to read netnews by pressing w (write). To create your article, enter the subject and text of your article. You can edit the text using the Pico editor. You post your article by typing CTRL-X. If you want to post a news article that begins a new thread while reading netnews with trn, type f and then type y when you are prompted to answer the question “Are you starting an unrelated topic.” You can then create your news article using the emacs editor.

Another way to post news articles to netnews is to use one of several different netnews programs that can be used to write news articles and to send them to the Usenet. Two of these are Pnews and postnews. We will describe how to use Pnews next.

Using Pnews

To use Pnews, type this:

 $ Pnews

You will be prompted for the answers to a series of questions. After providing the answers, you write your article and post it.

The first thing that Pnews asks you is to which newsgroup or newsgroups you want to post your article. You should include only relevant newsgroups, with the most relevant listed first. Some articles clearly belong in a specific newsgroup. For instance, if you have a question on computer graphics, you probably should only post it to comp.graphics. Other articles should be posted to more than one newsgroup. For instance, if you have a question on graphics in text processing, you may want to post this to comp.unix.questions, comp.text, and comp.graphics. Be sure not to post your article to inappropriate newsgroups.

Choosing a Distribution   After specifying the newsgroups for your article, Pnews asks you how wide distribution should be. There are some messages you would like all Usenet users in a particular group to receive. For instance, you may really want to ask Usenet users in Sweden, Australia, and Korea for responses to a question on computer graphics. However, if you are selling your car, it is quite unlikely that you want to send your netnews article to these countries. (If you post such an ad worldwide, someone in Sweden may sarcastically ask you to drive the car by for a look!) How widely your article is distributed depends on the response you give when the Pnews program prompts you for a distribution. The possibilities depend on your site and are displayed by the program.

After specifying the newsgroups, you are prompted for the Title/Subject and then asked whether you want to include an existing file in your posting. When you respond, you are then placed in your editor (specified by the value of your shell variable VISUAL or, if this is not set, EDITOR). The first lines of the file are in a particular format. There are lines for the newsgroup, the subject, a summary, a follow-up to line, a distribution line, an organization line, a keywords line, and a Cc: line. You can edit each of these lines and then edit your article. When you are finished editing the file, you can then send the article to the Usenet.

Including a Signature   You can have a block of lines automatically included at the end of every article you post. To do this, create a file called .signature in your home directory containing the lines you want to include at the end of your articles. (On some systems, no more than four lines are allowed in a netnews signature. This varies from system to system.) Be sure to change the permissions on this file to make sure it is readable by everyone. Besides putting your name, e-mail address, and phone number in your signature, you may want to put in your favorite saying. For example,

 $ cat .signature                   Oscar O. Orez                   ooojersey.ATT.COM      (201) 555–1234 ************************ Life is a Dream! ************************

To avoid irritating fellow netnews readers, do not use lengthy or offensive signatures.

Moderated Newsgroups

Not all newsgroups accept every article posted to them. Instead, some newsgroups, such as rec.humor.funny, have moderators who screen postings and decide which articles get posted. Moderators decide which articles to post by considering the appropriateness, tastefulness, or relative merit of postings. When you read articles with current versions of netnews software, moderated newsgroups are identified in the group heading of articles. When you post an article to a moderated group, your article will be sent directly to the moderator of the group for consideration.