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- From: hwr@pilhuhn.de (Heiko W.Rupp)
- Newsgroups: news.software.nntp,news.software.b,news.answers
- Subject: INN FAQ Part 1/9: General Information
- Supersedes: <faq.p1_881029525@pilhuhn.de>
- Followup-To: news.software.nntp
- Date: 9 Dec 1997 03:25:27 +0100
- Organization: The Home Of The Pilhuhn
- Lines: 499
- Approved: hwr@pilhuhn.de
- Expires: 26 Dec 1997 02:25:25 GMT
- Message-ID: <faq.p1_881634325@pilhuhn.de>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: snert.pilhuhn.de
- Summary: This article is part 1 of a multi-part FAQ:
- Part 1: Common questions about INN itself, useful to people that do not currently run INN.
- Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!boulder!csnews!coop.net!enews.sgi.com!news.sgi.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!fu-berlin.de!news.belwue.de!news.uni-ulm.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!pilhuhn.de!snert!news
- Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu news.software.nntp:43975 news.software.b:22604 news.answers:118767
-
- Posted-By: post_faq 2.10
- Archive-name: usenet/software/inn-faq/part1
- Last Changed: $Date: 1997/11/04 02:25:51 $ $Revision: 2.37 $
-
- Part 1 of 9
-
- INN FAQ Part 1: General and questions from people that don't (yet) run INN
- INN FAQ Part 2: Specific notes for specific operating systems
- INN FAQ Part 3: Reasons why INN isn't starting
- INN FAQ Part 4: The debugging tutorial (setup of feeds etc.)
- INN FAQ Part 5: Other error messages and what they mean
- INN FAQ Part 6: Day-to-day operation and changes to the system
- INN FAQ Part 7: Problems with INN already running
- INN FAQ Part 8: Appendix A: Norman's install guide
- INN FAQ Part 9: Appendix B: Configurations for certain systems
-
-
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: Table Of Contents for Part 1/9
-
- =====================================================================
- TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR PART 1/9
- =====================================================================
-
- QUESTIONS FROM PEOPLE THAT DON'T (YET) RUN INN:
- 1.1 What is INN?
- 1.2 I thought Rich Salz maintains INN ...
- 1.3 What's the future of unoff releases?
- 1.4 Where can I get the INN software?
- 1.5 Where can I get the latest copy of this FAQ?
- 1.6 Where may I find additional information?
- 1.7 What machines does it run on?
- 1.8 INN must be really complicated since this FAQ is so long!
- 1.9 Can I run C News with INN?
- 1.10 Can I run NNTP with INN?
- 1.11 Can I run the reference implementation (NNTP1.5) with INN?
- 1.12 Can I run INN on my UUCP-only machine?
- 1.13 Suppose I have a 286 machine?
- 1.14 Does INN implement NOV, xthread (trn) or xuser/xmotd (tin) commands?
- 1.15 Is an ident or authorization protocol supported?
- 1.16 Does INN do UUCP batching like C News?
- 1.17 Help! How do I configure this beast?
- 1.18 How do I thank the FAQ maintainer?
- 1.19 What has Netscape's Newsserver to do with INN?
- 1.20 How do I submit additional informations for the FAQ?
-
-
- The FAQ was written by Rich $alz <rsalz@rodan.uu.net>, was maintained
- for a long time by Tom Limoncelli <tal@plts.org> and is now
- maintained by Heiko W.Rupp <hwr@pilhuhn.de>
-
- These documents would not exist if it weren't for the people that have
- submitted questions and (most importantly) answers. THANK YOU ALL!
-
-
- =====================================================================
- QUESTIONS FROM PEOPLE THAT DON'T (YET) RUN INN
- =====================================================================
-
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: (1.1) What is INN?
-
- For a complete answer, why not read the Usenix paper that introduced
- INN to the world? It's available as
- ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/news/nntp/inn/inn.usenix.ps.Z
-
- InterNetNews is a complete Usenet system. The cornerstone of the package
- is innd, an NNTP server that multiplexes all I/O. Think of it as an nntpd
- merged with the B News inews, or as a C News relaynews that reads multiple
- NNTP streams. Newsreading is handled by a separate server, nnrpd, that is
- spawned for each client. Both innd and nnrpd have some slight variances
- from the NNTP protocol (although in normal use you will never notice); see
- the manpages. INN separates hosts that feed you news from those that have
- users reading news. If you need to support a mixed environment you will have
- to do some extra work; the installation manual gives some hints.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: (1.2) I thought Rich Salz maintains INN ...
-
- Rich did for a very long time ..
-
- From an announcement (<4k5pn3$ii9@paperboy.osf.org>) :
-
- | I am pleased to announce that the Internet Software Consortium
- | (http://www.isc.org/isc) will be responsible for future official INN
- | releases, starting with INN1.5. I am sure they will be posting a notice
- | about their plans here fairly soon.
-
- | The interest and support (both financial and emotional) they have given
- | me over the past few years has been immeasurable. It was this interest,
- | as much as their ability to commit top-flight engineering talent, that
- | makes me feel confident that I'm leaving "my baby" in good hands.
-
- | I will still be involved with INN development, although more in an archi-
- | tectural and philosophical role (i.e., "do it this way") rather than
- | programming (i.e., "here's the code").
-
- | If you've found INN useful, I'm glad. (By my count several thousand people
- | still owe me a postcard. :) If you expect to find it useful in the future,
- | please support the ISC and their efforts. I know I will.
- | /rich $alz
-
- For the postcards, Rich adds in (<565e4r$5v2@paperboy.osf.org>):
-
- | No no no. James gets the postcard. This means you have to track down
- | his current physical address; perhaps in-care-of the ISC would work. :)
-
- | The rules are actually pretty complicated:
- | If you're installing 1.4sec2 or earlier, send yourself a postcard
- | saying you should upgrade.
-
- | If you're installing 1.5 or later, for the first time with INN,
- | send James the postcard.
-
- | If you're upgrading from 1.4 to 1.5, pro-rate your news volume
- | and send us each the appropriate fraction. :)
-
- Dave Barr added that the postcards for him also should be sent to the
- ISC.
-
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: (1.3) What's the future of unoff releases?
-
- Q: As Rich no longer does inn - what's the future on unoff releases?
-
- Dave Barr wrote:
-
- | As it stands now I have decided to stop releasing any more unoff versions
- | unless someone can convince me otherwise. I am redirecting my efforts
- | towards helping 1.5 see the light. The code base has drifted enough
- | already -- releasing unoff5 while 1.5 is trying to integrate unoff4
- | stuff would be counterproductive.
-
- | To put it another way, consider the INN1.4unoff to be under a
- | code freeze. Only bug fixes (and even then only to unoff-specific
- | code, like streaming) will be accepted.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: (1.4) Where can I get the INN software?
-
- The official archive site was ftp.uu.net in the directory
- networking/news/nntp/inn. Archie current lists over 30 archive sites;
- three other international sites are ftp.univ-lyon1.fr in
- pub/unix/news/inn, munnari.oz.au in pub/news/inn, and src.doc.ic.ac.uk
- in computing/usenet/software/transport
-
- The latest version is INN 1.7 available from
- ftp://ftp.vix.com/pub/inn/
- or mirrors which are indicated on http://www.isc.org/inn.html
- one mirror in Europe is
- ftp://ftp.xlink.net/pub/mirror.inn/
-
- !! Note that INN1.5.1 has a security vulnerability. You can find a
- !! first patch to this at http://miquels.www.cistron.nl/inn/
-
- Patches for older versions are available from:
-
- Patches for INN are at: ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/inn/unoff-patches
- and ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/inn/unoff-patches/OLD
- Add-ons for INN are at: ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/inn/unoff-contrib
- ("Add-ons" include "Gup" and other interesting tools)
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: (1.5) Where can I get the latest copy of this FAQ?
-
- 0. If you are reading this document, then you already have part 1 of it.
- So look around where you found this if the other parts are also there.
-
- 1. This nine-part FAQ is available via FTP at any FTP site that carries
- INN itself.
-
- 2. This FAQ is also posted to news.software.nntp, news.software.b and
- news.answers about every week.
-
- 3. If you don't find it in one of the above places, then try
- ftp://ftp.xlink.net/pub/news/docs/
- (on this server I put the newest FAQ after posting it -hwr).
-
- 4. A htmlized version can be found under
- http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/usenet/software/inn-faq/top.html
- These are grabbed from news.answers - so they might be a bit out
- of date :-(
-
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: (1.6) Where may I find additional information?
-
- The Usenix paper from Rich $alz:
- ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/news/nntp/inn/inn.usenix.ps.Z
-
- The Web site of the new maintainers, the Internet Software Consortium
- http://www.isc.org/inn.html
-
- A good overview for those not familiar with news (from Tom Podnar
- <tpodnar@bones.wcupa.edu>):
- ftp://bones.wcupa.edu/pub/misc/nntp.ps
-
- A FAQ in french - maintained by Fabien Tassin <tassin@eerie.fr>
- at http://www.eerie.fr/~news/faq.html
-
- A Usenet/INN hypertext documentation effort by Forrest J. Cavalier III
- <mibsoft@epix.net>
- at http://www.mibsoftware.com/userkt/userkt.html
-
- A FAQ in Japanese - maintained by Toshio Hori <toshi@etl.go.jp>
- at ftp://etlport.etl.go.jp/pub/People/toshi/INN/J/
-
-
- Jeff Garzik <jeff.garzik@spinne.com> started to write a ``INN tuning
- page'' which is oriented towards the Intel/Linux platform (but not
- only of interest for Linux users) at
- http://www.spinne.com/usenet/inn-perf.html
-
- RFC's important to News:
- RFC 977: NNTP (Phil Lapsley and Brian Kantor)
- RFC 1036: Standard for Interchange of USENET Messages
- (M.Horton, Rick Adams)
-
- The O'Reilly Book (only for C News ; new version is in work)
- Managing UUCP and Usenet (Tim O'Reilly and Grace Todino)
- This book seems to be no longer in print, so O'Reilly probably
- has no book about Usenet at the moment.
-
- The newsgroup news.software.nntp; please look around in this group. Often
- you'll find there the answer to the question you were going to ask.
- But don't hesitate to ask.
- If you can't post to news.software.nntp you can send mail to
- inn-questions@pilhuhn.de which will post the your mail in that group.
-
- Dave Barr has put together some information about his unoff releases.
- This page is also a entry for the patch archive:
- <http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~barr/INN.html>
-
- The overview database with its XOVER nntp extension is described in
- ftp://ftp.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-barber-nntp-imp-01.txt
- This is superseded by
- draft-barber-nntp-imp-02.txt on the same site.
- and will be superseded by version 3 soon, which you also might get from
- ftp://ftp.academ.com/pub/nntp/private/nntp.extensions.draft.txt
- (This one is now at the 4th update)
-
- There is a book from Addison-Wesley called 'Administering Usenet News
- Servers' by Jim McDermott and John Phillips (ISBN 0-201-41967-X)
- which seems to cover INN and Dnews. This is not clear from the aw web
- site though.
-
- There is no special book on INN out at the moment, but it is said,
- that Dave Lawrence and Henry Spencer are currently writing one for
- O'Reilly.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: (1.7) What machines does it run on?
-
- If you have socket() and select() then INN will probably run on your
- machine. In addition to the common platforms found around the Internet
- (SunOS and Ultrix, for example), INN runs on IBM's AIX, Apple's A/UX,
- NeXT, Solaris 2.x, most SVR4 platforms, BSDI, most free BSD systems
- (NetBSD, FreeBSD, ...) and a host of others. It might require a
- little bit of tweaking of some free BSD platforms that have really bad
- shells.
-
- INN has not been ported to Windows NT. There are no plans to do so.
- However, someone has written a package called NNS (Usenet Network News
- Server) which is a NNTP-compliant news server for Windows NT. For
- information write to nns@jeck.wa.com.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: (1.8) INN must be really complicated since this FAQ is so long!
-
- No, it's just that the FAQ is very complete.
-
- A lot of the material could be integrated into the Install.ms doc.
-
- Please post questions to news.software.nntp. Do not send
- email to Heiko W.Rupp directly. By posting your question,
- a group of 10 or so people will be trying to help you.
- On the other hand -- if you have a solution that should be included,
- then send it to the maintainer, so that he can't miss it in the news.
- See also #1.20 and #9.1.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: (1.9) Can I run C News with INN?
-
- No. INN handles all article reception, filing, forwarding, and
- expiration. You will get a corrupted database if you try to
- run INN with any other news system. For testing, you can probably shut
- down your old system, bring up INN, and then reverse the process. (INN
- uses the C News history file and DBZ database, so if you don't run C News
- you will have to do some fiddling around with those files.)
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: (1.10) Can I run NNTP with INN?
-
- There's a confusion here. NNTP is a protocol, defined in RFC 977. There
- is also an implementation of the protocol, NNTP1.5, that many people call
- NNTP. When there was only one implementation of the protocol, that was
- okay, but now that there are other implementations (for example, INN) it
- is getting confusing. It would be as if "sendmail" were named "smtp."
- Please try to be clear -- do you mean the NNTP protocol, or the NNTP
- reference implementation currently maintained by Stan Barber?
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: (1.11) Can I run the reference implementation (NNTP1.5) with INN?
-
- The quick answer is no. INN listens on the NNTP port and handles all
- incoming traffic. It receives articles, files them, and arranges for
- them to be forwarded to your peers. If a site connects that is not
- listed as a peer (e.g., a local workstation that does newsreading) then
- the INN server hands the connection off to another program that handles
- just the NNTP commands that newsreaders use. By default, this is nnrpd
- (notice the "r"), which implements the NNTP protocol for newsreaders
- (for example, it includes the POST command but not the IHAVE command).
- You can run the reference implementation server instead of nnrpd if you
- want. Doing this can be useful if you have clients that want to do
- both reading and article transfer.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: (1.12) Can I run INN on my UUCP-only machine?
-
- Sure. While not designed for this, several people are running INN on
- machines that do not have IP-connectivity (such as UUCP-only hosts) and
- are quite happy with it. You might want to give it a try, especially if
- you think you will be joining the Internet some day.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: (1.13) Suppose I have a 286 machine?
-
- Won't work. INN is designed to be a memory hog; a server that has been up
- for a few days while will have a working set size of a few to several
- megabytes, although not all of it will be resident. For example, the
- server keeps the active file and list of who gets what in memory, as well
- as all articles that it is receiving. Unless you can do things like
- "malloc(64 * 1024)" without pain, INN won't work on your machine.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: (1.14) Does INN implement NOV, xthread (trn) or xuser/xmotd (tin) commands?
-
- Newsreaders all need some way to quickly grab data from
- a range of articles. trn, tin, nn, and others each developed
- their own database format, and their own extensions to the NNTP
- protocol for clients to read the database. Then, Geoff Collyer
- invented NOV, the database to end all other databases.
-
- Rather than support a different database format for each newsreader,
- INN supports Geoff Collyer's news overview database, NOV. INN includes
- everything you need to create/maintain/expire NOV's .overview files.
- You only need Geoff's distribution (available via FTP on ftp.std.com
- src/news/nov.dist.tar.Z) if you want to see how he implements things,
- or to get his client library (useful when building some newsreaders).
-
- It is very easy to configure INN to use NOV. Read Part 4/9 of
- this faq: Subject: Cookbook example of setting up NOV ("overchan")
- NB: The NOV code in INN 1.3 is buggy. Use 1.4 or higher.
-
- The xover command is used for querying the NOV database. The xover
- command is very smart in that if the article has been canceled, the
- data isn't given out. If the article is so new that it's data isn't in
- the NOV database, nnrpd opens the article and digs out the data. xhrd
- and xpat make every effort to use NOV data before they dig the data out
- of the actual articles, thus making them considerably faster than other
- implementations. The "xoverview" command does not exist. If your
- server supports this command you need to upgrade.
-
- What about TRN's xthread command?
-
- The xthread command has code but it is not supported; look at
- $inn/nnrpd/nnrpd.h. This code will probably vanish after 1.4.
-
- What about TIN's many commands?
-
- Tin commands are not supported. However, other people have
- added TIN support. See the next section.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: (1.15) Is an ident or authorization protocol supported?
-
- An unsupported patch for nnrpd to add ident support can be found via
- FTP at ftp://ftp.csie.nctu.edu.tw/pub/News/packages/nnrpd-ident.tar.gz It
- includes patches to add tin's xuser and xmotd commands as well as a
- list subscription system. (skhuang@csie.nctu.edu.tw)
-
- Remember: ident information is only as valid as the server you connect
- to. Any fool with root access (or anyone with a PC or Mac) can create
- a bogus ident server that will give out whatever information they want
- you to see. It's not an authorization or identification protocol, it's
- just informational.
-
- The authd protocol is added to nnrpd by <nhiro@isci.kyutech.ac.jp>.
- This unsupported patch can be found in
- ftp://ftp.eos.hokudai.ac.jp/pub/network/news/inn/patches/authd-patch-1.3.tar.gz
- The documentation is in Japanese. Good luck.
-
- In a future release, you will be able to log all POST commands with
- ident information if you so choose. (Maybe INN 1.5)
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: (1.16) Does INN do UUCP batching like C News?
-
- Not as part of the standard distribution. The batching system right
- now is better than B News, but Rich has said he will be working on
- improving that part of INN in a future release. Christophe Wolfhugel
- <Christophe.Wolfhugel@grasp.insa-lyon.fr> has written a package that is
- very much like the C News batching system, however. You can find it at
- ftp://ftp.univ-lyon1.fr/pub/unix/news/inn/contrib/
-
- Version 3 of Christophe's package includes a shell version and a Perl
- version. Version 4, not yet planned will only be in Perl. The
- configuration file has evolved from older releases in order to support
- new features like "minimum batching".
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: (1.17) Help! How do I configure this beast?
-
- READ AND FOLLOW THE "Install.ms" FILE. This FAQ is meant to add to
- what Install.ms says not replace it. Even if a already configured or
- pre installed INN comes with your OS, you should at least glance at
- Install.ms to see where is what and why.
-
- Many people that thought the Install.ms doc was incomplete later
- re-read the "First Time Installation" portion and were amazed how much
- they missed (or just plain skipped) the first time.
-
- You should also purchase the O'Reilly And Associates book on Managing
- Usenet to give yourself a good grounding on how to run a site.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: (1.18) How do I thank the FAQ maintainer?
-
- If you find this document useful, please consider making a donation to
- the maintainer's favorite charity:
-
- | The Personal Liberty Fund
- | PO Box 11335
- | New Brunswick, NJ 08906-1335
- | USA
-
- The PLF is a legal and educational organization which helps people in
- New Jersey, USA. They have many on-going projects which range from
- combating youth suicide to legal advocacy. Their Anti-Violence Project
- runs a phone hotline for reporting gay-bashing which helps hundreds of
- people a year. The PLF is an all-volunteer organization and couldn't
- survive without donations. The PLF is recognized by the IRS as a
- 501(c)3 tax-exempt charity. Donations are tax deductible to the
- fullest extent of the law (U.S. citizens only). Please write "INN" in
- the memo field of the check. Fifteen, fifty, or five hundred dollars...
- every penny is appreciated!
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: (1.19) What has Netscape's Newsserver to do with INN?
-
- Netscape took INN as the original source base for their server and
- added their own extensions. As revisions go by they will differ more.
- Rich $alz adds:
-
- | netscape did not get any special consideration for INN. Anyone who
- | wants to commercialize it is free to do so.Read the COPYRIGHT file.
-
- You can get answers to problems with the Netscape Server in
- snews://secnews.netscape.com/netscape.server.news
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: (1.20) How do I submit additional information for the FAQ?
-
- If you have an addition to the FAQ then send it to the actual
- maintainer Heiko W.Rupp <hwr@pilhuhn.de>. Please try to bring your
- submission in the style of the actual FAQ (Especially if you submit an
- entry for part9 then please follow #9.1). If you put (along others)
- 'inn' in the subject, you will get an automatic acknowledge of
- receipt.
-
-
- --
- See <a href="http://www.netbsd.org">NetBSD</a> for a multiplatform OS
- What would you call a BBS run by a mom?
- A "mother board".
-