Facilitating installation and update of anti-spam filter

[Julien ÉLIE]

Hi Grant,

>> Unfortunately I am not aware of such a mailing-list...
> 
> That sounds like something that could be rectified.

Instead of a new mailing-list, why not use existing newsgroups like 
news.admin.misc, news.software.misc or news.admin.announce? (the latter 
is moderated)

(Rare) changes to control.ctl, NoCeM issuers, moderators & like could be 
announced there...
Same thing in case there's a new release of Cleanfeed, PyClean or any 
other news-related software.

Could be worth trying anyway.  I may ask Tim Skirvin what he would think 
of using news.admin.announce for such information.



>> Which in fact raises the question of how to ease the administration of 
>> a news server and inform admins of changes they should have a look at?
> 
> I don't know.  If INN supports include file directive(s) and (re)setting 
> values multiple times, I could see how the configuration files could be 
> addressed.  E.g. have default in <file>, which has something like 
> "include <file>.local" as it's last line.  Then any INN / distro 
> provided settings that the admin wants to overwrite could be placed in 
> the <file>.local file.

I see what you mean.  Unfortunately, INN does not support that feature 
for all configuration files; nocem.ctl and moderators do not have that; 
control.ctl.local can somehow do the job (but essentially to add new 
rules, the idea isn't to put a drop of everything at the beginning of 
control.ctl.local and then re-add stuff...).



> There might be an opportunity for some minor refactoring to make 
> supporting updates easier.

Probably, though we could try to start a better communication about such 
changes in one or several newsgroups.

-- 
Julien ÉLIE

« Ce vieux forban d'Asthmatix, il ne manquait pas d'air ! » (Astérix)