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Re: Debian 1.2 breaks INN, UUCP



In article <[🔎] 199612200447.WAA04432@complete.org> you wrote:
: 
: For some reason, the compress progam is missing from Debian 1.2.

The "compress" that was part of early Debian 1.1 releases was actually a link
to "gzip".  This was a bad thing to do, because it broke some applications that
expected a "compress" program to actually create "compress"'ed files as output,
namely the X build and some sites who did UUCP'ed news to neighbors who didn't
have gzip.

The real "compress" has patent issues or something that cause it to have bad
karma in the free software (Linux) community.  I forget the details.

: This deletion was made WITHOUT WARNING to me.

The change was a bug fix.  It got a bunch of discussion in debian-devel on a
couple of occasions in the last year.

: Not having it available has BROKEN my newsfeed.

You were really lucky that the "compress" link to gzip worked for you at all.
It suggests that your neighbors were using the "uncompress" that is a link to
gunzip, as is still provided in Debian.  If they had really been using compress
you would have been hosed long ago.

: But Debian's send-uucp program ignores /etc/news/send-uucp.cf. 

I can't help here.  Sounds like a legitimate bug that should be reported in
the package that provides send-uucp... inn?

I'm sorry that this change caused you grief.  I hope that my explaination helps
clarify what happened, and encourages you to understand that the changes you've
made are absolutely the right things to have done.

Bdale


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