There are two ways you can approach this. One is just to start the
posting process with uqwk and hang up. Be sure to nohup the process.
nohup uqwk -m -n +L -RREPLIES >qwklog
will send output to the qwklog file so you can check how it did when you
login next time. Be warned that uqwk sends all error messages to stderr,
so you have to redirect that too if you want to really see what's going
on. I use the C shell, so would use >& to redirect output to a file.
Another way to deal with slow posting is to just run the process in the
background. I use
uqwk -m -n +L -RREPLIES >& qwklog &
This runs uqwk in the background from csh and dumps all output to qwklog.
If you're using other shells, like Korn Shell (ksh) you will need to
consult your shell docs to see how to redirect output and run a task
in the background.
According to _Unix in a Nutshell_, my favorite cheat sheet for unix
commands, the Bourne Shell (sh) and Korn Shell (ksh) command would
look something like
uqwk -m -n +L -RREPLIES >qwklog 2>&1 &
Give it a try. There's no reason to sit around and wait for unix to
post. The task will run fine in the background.
I use the same technique to assemble packets for download. I use a short
shell script that just zips up default size news packets as down1.zip,
down2.zip, etc. and start downloading as soon as down1.zip is ready.
I do a zmodem download in the foreground while the unix system continues
to assemble packets in the background.
Obviously, I'm long distance to my ISP, so my stragegy is to grab news
with an absolute minimum of online time. Quite often I have uqwk assembling
packets, uqwk posting, and am downloading news all at the same time.
If the system is running really slow, I just log out and call in again
later when all the packets are ready.
-- Larry