Question on filtering incoming feed

Humes, David G. David.Humes at jhuapl.edu
Thu Jan 24 18:58:30 UTC 2002


Hello,

I inherited a Usenet server from a previous admin and am trying to make
sense of what's there.  So, first off we're running INND 2.1 on a Solaris
2.6 server.  We receive a partial feed from our ISP that restricts the feed
to groups that have some relevance to our business.  We are in the process
of switching over to a new ISP, and I have some concern that if they were to
misconfigure the feed we would receive groups containing objectionable
content.  It seems like incoming.conf would be the place to filter that out,
but I observe that we only filter our local groups so we don't get them from
outside if someone were to create one.  Here's a snip of our incoming.conf
showing the peer entry for our current ISP:

peer DIGEX {
  hostname:         news-out.digex.net
  patterns:         *,!apl.*
  max-connections:  1

This is what we would like to receive:

!*,comp.*,news.*,sci.*,gnu.*,\
ieee.*,vmsnet.*,biz.*,balt.*,dc.*,gov.*,\
alt.sci.tech.indonesian,alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt,\
alt.comp.lang.applescript,alt.comp.sys.palmtops.hp,\
alt.certification.mcse,rec.radio.amateur.antenna,\
rec.radio.amateur.equipment,rec.radio.amateur.misc,\
rec.radio.amateur.digital.misc,rec.radio.amateur.homebrew,\
microsoft.*

If I put this list in the patterns field, innd gives me a syntax error on
the pattern line when it starts up.  I removed the \ characters and strung
it all out on one line and that didn't help.  If I reduce the length of the
inclusion list I can get it to work.  With a list of 235 characters it
works.  With a list of 264 characters it fails.  I'm guessing here that it's
limited to 256 characters.  Is this a "feature" that I just have to live
with, or is there anything that I can do.

Thanks.

Dave Humes
Enterprise Communications Group  
Applied Physics Lab/JHU
Johns Hopkins Road, Laurel, MD 20723
david.humes at jhuapl.edu
Baltimore:        443-778-6651     FAX 443-778-5727
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