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- From: vince@victrola.wa.com (Vince Skahan)
- Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce,comp.os.linux.admin,comp.answers,news.answers
- Subject: Linux News HOWTO
- Followup-To: poster
- Date: 16 Mar 1994 05:27:44 GMT
- Organization: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Lines: 803
- Approved: linux-announce@tc.cornell.edu (Matt Welsh)
- Message-ID: <2m65cg$e17@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>
- Reply-To: vince@victrola.wa.com (Vince Skahan)
- NNTP-Posting-Host: calzone.oit.unc.edu
- Originator: mdw@sunSITE
- Xref: bloom-beacon.mit.edu comp.os.linux.announce:1955 comp.os.linux.admin:5616 comp.answers:4185 news.answers:16454
-
- Archive-name: linux/howto/news
- Last-modified: 26 January 1994
-
- The Linux News HOWTO
- by Vince Skahan, <vince@victrola.wa.com>
- v1.6, Last Modified 26 January 1994
- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- This document describes the setup and care+feeding of USENET News under
- Linux.
-
- You need to read this if you plan to post or read USENET news either
- locally on your site or between your site and other sites.
-
- You probably do *not* need to read this document if don't plan to provide
- USENET news as a feature of your system.
-
-
- 0. Introduction
-
- The intent of this document is to answer some of the questions and comments
- that appear to meet the definition of 'frequently asked questions' about
- USENET News software under Linux in general, and the version in the Linux
- SLS distribution in particular.
-
- This document and the corresponding Mail and UUCP 'HOWTO' documents
- collectively supersede the UUCP-NEWS-MAIL-FAQ that has previously been
- posted to comp.os.linux.announce.
-
-
- 0.1 New versions of this document
-
- New versions of this document will be periodically posted to
- comp.os.linux.announce, comp.answers, and news.answers. They will
- also be added to the various anonymous ftp sites who archive such
- information including sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO.
-
-
- 0.2 Feedback
-
- I am interested in any feedback, positive or negative, regarding
- the content of this document via e-mail. Definitely contact me if
- you find errors or obvious omissions.
-
- I read, but do not necessarily respond to, all e-mail I receive.
- Requests for enhancements will be considered and acted upon based on
- that day's combination of available time, merit of the request, and
- daily blood pressure :-)
-
- Flames will quietly go to /dev/null so don't bother.
-
- Feedback concerning the actual format of the document should go to
- the HOWTO coordinator - Matt Welsh (mdw@sunsite.unc.edu).
-
- 0.3 Copyright Information
-
- The News-HOWTO is copyrighted (c)1994 Vince Skahan.
-
- A verbatim copy may be reproduced or distributed in any medium physical
- or electronic without permission of the author. Translations are
- similarly permitted without express permission if it includes a notice
- on who translated it.
-
- Short quotes may be used without prior consent by the author.
- Derivative work and partial distributions of the News-HOWTO must be
- accompanied with either a verbatim copy of this file or a pointer to
- the verbatim copy.
-
- Commercial redistribution is allowed and encouraged; however, the
- author would like to be notified of any such distributions.
-
- In short, we wish to promote dissemination of this information through
- as many channels as possible. However, we do wish to retain copyright
- on the HOWTO documents, and would like to be notified of any plans to
- redistribute the HOWTOs.
-
- We further want that ALL information provided in the HOWTOS is
- disseminated. If you have questions, please contact Matt Welsh, the
- Linux HOWTO coordinator, at mdw@sunsite.unc.edu, or +1 607 256 7372.
-
-
- 0.4 Standard Disclaimer
-
- Of course, I disavow any potential liability for the contents of this
- document. Use of the concepts, examples, and/or other content of this
- document is entirely at your own risk.
-
-
- 0.5 Other sources of information
-
- USENET:
- =======
- news.admin.misc General topics of network news administration.
- news.admin.policy Policy issues of USENET.
- news.admin.technical Maintaining network news. (Moderated)
- news.software.b Discussion about B-news-compatible software.
- news.software.nn Discussion about the "nn" news reader package.
- news.software.nntp The Network News Transfer Protocol.
- news.software.readers Software used to read network news.
- news.sysadmin Comments directed to system administrators.
- news.announce.newusers Explanatory postings for new users. (Moderated)
- news.newusers.questions Q & A for users new to the Usenet.
-
- Books:
- ======
-
- The following is a non-inclusive set of books that will help...
-
- 'Managing UUCP and USENET' published by O'Reilly+Associates is in
- my opinion the best book out there for figuring out the programs
- and protocols involved in being a USENET site.
-
- 'Unix Communications' published by The Waite Group contains a nice
- description of all the pieces (and more) and how they fit together.
-
- 'Practical Unix Security' published by O'Reilly+Associates has a
- nice discussion of how to secure UUCP in general.
-
- 'The Internet Complete Reference' from Osborne is a fine reference book
- that explains the various services available on Internet and is a great
- "one-stop-shopping" source for information on news, mail, and various
- other Internet resources.
-
-
- 0.6 Where *NOT* to look for help
-
- There is nothing 'special' about configuring and running USENET
- news under Linux (any more). Accordingly, you almost certainly do
- *NOT* want to be posting generic news-related questions to the
- comp.os.linux.* newsgroups.
-
- Unless your posting is truly Linux-specific (ie, "please tell me
- what patches are needed to run INN with the bash1.12 in SLS v1.03)
- you should be asking your questions in the newsgroups mentioned above.
-
- Let me repeat that.
-
- There is virtually no reason to post anything news-related in the
- comp.os.linux hierarchy any more. There are existing newsgroups in
- the news.* hierarchy to handle *ALL* your questions.
-
-
- 1.0 Hardware Requirements
-
- There are no specific hardware requirements for USENET News under
- Linux. The only requirement of any type is sufficient disk space
- to hold the software itself, the threads database(s), and the
- amount of news you wish to keep on the system. Figure on a minimum
- of 10 MB of disk space for starters.
-
-
- 2.0 Getting USENET News software
-
- All the software referenced in this 'HOWTO' is available on the usual
- Internet anonymous ftp sites.
-
- Looking in /news on ftp.uu.net is usually a good way to start.
-
- The newspak-2.0.tar.z distribution contains config files and readme
- files related to building uucp, news, and mail software under Linux
- from the various freely-available sources. It can usually be found
- on sunsite.unc.edu in the directory /pub/Linux/system/Mail.
-
-
- 3.0 News Transport Software
-
- There are two main sets of news 'transport' software for *nix these
- days, Cnews and INN. The old 'Bnews' has been declared officially
- dead and unsupported by its authors.
-
- News 'transport' is defined here to be the software that works behind
- the scenes to post and propagate the news articles as well as making
- the articles available for the newsreaders to access.
-
- You can set your paths to anything you like, as long as UUCP has the
- absolute path to rnews in the Permissions file and as long as you
- have your newsreaders configured so that they can find 'inews' and
- 'mail'.
-
- Important - you're asking for trouble if you try to intermix Cnews
- and INN. Pick one or the other. It's ok to add the NNTP 'Reference
- Release' into Cnews since they're intended to play well together.
-
-
- 3.1 Cnews Performance Release
-
- The current de-facto standard news software is Cnews. It has been
- around for a number of years, I first saw it sometime around 1988.
-
- Cnews's main benefit is its maturity. It runs on about every *nix
- you can find and there are literally thousands of systems running
- it worldwide.
-
- Its main disadvantage is that it seems to have been intended for
- uucp-over-modem connections between sites and as such requires
- the addition of NNTP software to handle realtime Internet feeds
- and reading.
-
- In addition, it requires external threading packages for the
- various newsreaders, although the NOV package can now be hooked in
- to help somewhat and it's rumored to have native NOV support in the
- upcoming 'cleanup' release.
-
- Regardless, the beginning USENET admin should probably run Cnews
- first since it's so stable, well documented, and has many thousands
- of experienced administrators who can answer questions.
-
- The newspak-2.0.tar.z distribution on sunsite contains working
- config files for Cnews under Linux as well as a couple line patch
- you'll need to make to 'doexplode' to get around some problems with
- bash1.12. bash1.13 is now available on the various Linux archive
- sites that should help.
-
-
- 3.1.1 Installing Cnews
-
- Installing the Performance Release of Cnews is absolutely a 'rtfm'
- project. Just grab the sources, extract them, and follow the
- instructions.
-
- The build.def in newspak was generated by running 'build' the
- first time and simply looking up the answers by checking out the
- /usr/include files to get the right answers.
-
- When you start the actual compilation, it'll blow up a couple of
- times. In all cases, you'll need to simply comment out a couple of
- atoi() and atol() macros that gcc doesn't like when your doit.bin
- compilation blows up.
-
- Also, you need the following tiny change to doexplode to get around
- some bash1.12 bugs or else you won't feed anything downstream...
-
- [...from Steve Robbins - steve@nyongwa.cam.org ...]
-
- if [ ! -f $f ] ; then continue; fi # add this line
- # case "$f" in # comment me out
- # "out.master/[0-9]*") break ;; # comment me out
- # esac # comment me out
-
- Henry Spencer of Cnews fame says that the code in doexplode that is
- currently causing problems with bash is on the list to be revised in
- a future release.
-
- It is uncertain at this time if the need for this patch goes away
- if you switch to the beta bash1.13 now available for Linux.
-
- 3.1.2 Configuring Cnews
-
- At the very least, you need to edit the following files that all
- should be in /usr/local/lib/news:
-
- active - the active file
- batchparms - batch parameters
- explist - article expiration setup
- mailname - name in headers for mailed replies
- mailpaths - path to mail moderated postings to
- organization - your 'org'
- sys - control what you take and feed
- whoami - your hostname for the Path: line
-
-
- 3.1.3 Maintaining a Cnews Site
-
- First, a significant rule of thumb is to not mess with files
- by hand that have utilities that configure them. In particular
- don't set up newsfeeds (run 'addfeed'instead) and don't mess with
- your active file (run 'addgroup'). When in doubt, read and re-read
- the docs in the source distribution.
-
- Everything else can be done via cron. My crontab for 'news' looks
- like the following:
-
- # take the compressed batches that came in from other systems
- 20 * * * * /usenet/sw/news/bin/input/newsrun
-
- # batch 'em up to go out
- 0 * * * * /usenet/sw/news/bin/batch/sendbatches myfeedsite
-
- # expire C-news
- 59 0 * * * /usenet/sw/news/bin/expire/doexpire
-
- # monitor stuff and report if needed
- 10 5 * * * /usenet/sw/news/bin/newsdaily
- 00 5 * * * /usenet/sw/new/bin/newswatch
-
- # turn processing of incoming news batches off 6:30AM - 4:00 PM
- 30 6 * * * /usenet/sw/news/bin/input/newsrunning off
- 00 16 * * * /usenet/sw/news/bin/input/newsrunning on
-
-
- 3.2 InterNetNews (INN)
-
- INN is the newcomer on the scene, but it's gaining popularity as
- it matures. Its main benefit is speed and the fact that it contains
- an integrated nntp package. Its main drawback is that it's new and
- that it doesn't necessarily install and run flawlessly on the many
- 'standard *nixes' yet. In addition, it operates by having a daemon
- (the innd) always running plus potentially a overchan daemon to do
- threading. The tradeoff seems to be memory vs. speed.
-
- New USENET admins should probably not try INN until they have
- experience with either B-news or Cnews. While it's fast and
- reliable under Linux, it's virtually undocumented for the
- beginning news administrator (though in practice it's rather
- simple to run once you figure it out).
-
- INN is very particular about its permissions. Don't mess with them.
-
-
- 3.2.1 Installing INN
-
- [... from Arjan de Vet - devet@info.win.tue.nl ...]
-
- I've made a patch + config kit for INN 1.4 to get it to run on Linux.
- It can be found at:
-
- ftp.win.tue.nl:/pub/linux/ports/inn-1.4-linux.tar.gz
-
- INN depends heavily on a good /bin/sh substitute. I use a beta
- version of bash 1.13 that is now available for Linux on the normal
- archive sites. bash 1.12 gives some small problems with
- newgroups not being handled correctly (maybe some other problems
- too, I don't remember).
-
-
- 3.2.2 Configuring INN
-
- Basically follow Arjan's instructions and you'll be all set.
- Here's the summary of what to do:
-
- - In config.data, make sure you have "HAVE_UNIX_DOMAIN DONT"
- - Add the hostname of the system running innd to hosts.nntp
- (for a uucp-only site, that's your sitename...)
- - Make sure you do not have a line for nntp in /etc/inetd.conf
- - Make sure that you have innshellvars say "HAVE_UUSTAT DO"
- rather than the 'DONT' in his example config.data if you
- have uustat from the Taylor UUCP package installed. If you
- have this defined wrong, it'll result in no outgoing news
- getting batched.
-
- If you run INN, *definitely* define the recommended syslogd
- stuff because it is very, very helpful.
-
- There is a spectacular (!!!!) FAQ for INN that comes out monthly.
- Look on rtfm.mit.edu for it. You'll be glad you did.
-
-
- 3.2.3 Maintaining a INN Site
-
- I've found that there's essentially zero care-and-feeding of
- a Linux INN site other than having a working 'cron'. Basically
- you want a crontab that looks something like the following:
-
- # daily maint, also expire the .overview database and articles
- 1 0 * * * /usenet/sw/inn/bin/news.daily expireover delayrm < /dev/null
-
- # send 'em out
- 5 * * * * /usenet/sw/inn/lib/send-uucp
-
- [ if you switch to bash1.13, the '< /dev/null' above is not needed ]
-
-
- 3.3 Other News Transport Agents
-
- The following is a non-inclusive list of other news transport
- software known to work under Linux:
-
- dynafeed, nntp1.5.11, slurp1.05
-
- 4.0 News Readers
-
- There is no 'one true newsreader'. As a result, there are many
- well-known newsreaders that port easily to Linux in particular. At
- this writing, 'tin', 'trn', and 'nn' are in the SLS distribution of
- Linux.
-
- When picking a newsreader, you basically want to find something
- that is easy to use, very configurable by the user, with threading
- and kill files (to select interesting articles or make the
- non-interesting ones not appear at all).
-
- You can set your paths to anything you like as long as all the
- newsreaders can find 'inews' from your Cnews or INN installation
- and a 'mail' program to send mail replies to posts.
-
- This section will talk briefly about several of the most popular
- ones. Before you ask, I use 'nn' for lots of reasons :-)
-
-
- 4.1 Tin
-
- Tin is a threaded newsreader generally intended to be easy for new
- users. It supports kill files and NOV threading. If you're running
- INN, it will read NOV .overview files by default and not write index
- files.
-
- To compile Tin under linux, basically just edit the makefile to set
- the locations of the software (especially the location of inews)
- and type 'make linux'. There are no patches required for tin under
- Linux.
-
- For threading, you can basically just say 'tin -u' to update the
- index files.
-
- To enable the ability to read via NNTP, compile with 'NNTP_ABLE'
- defined. This will result in a file called 'tin' for local and one
- called 'rtin' for NNTP reading. 'tin -r' will also get the same
- behavior as 'rtin'.
-
- Iain Lea recommends the following crontab entry and says that you
- need to do a 'make daemon' to make tind.
-
- # thread the database
- 35 * * * * /usenet/bin/tind -u
-
-
- 4.2 Trn/Mthreads
-
- trn is a threaded derivative of the 'rn' newsreader. trn3.3 has
- the nice ability to select either the 'mthreads' (trn's threading
- package) or NOV (threader from INN) threading.
-
- To compile it, just run Configure and take the calculated defaults.
- You might need to have lib4.4.1 and bash-1.13 (there is a beta now
- available on the various Linux archive sites) to successfully run
- Configure. You'll probably need both bash1.13 and libs4.4.1 to
- get the new Configure to run properly.
-
- The newspak-2.0.tar.z distribution on sunsite contains working
- config files for trn under Linux.
-
- It's probably unwise to try to edit a trn config.sh by hand unless
- you're doing something *VERY* simple like changing the paths to
- fit your tastes. If you do so, you'll need to run 'Configure -S'
- before you 'make depend', 'make', and 'make install'.
-
- Although 'Configure' fails generally under Linux with bash1.12,
- 'Configure -S' work fine so if you take the newspak config.sh as a
- starting point, you'll be very close.
-
- Compiling for NNTP reading is as simple as answering 'yes' when
- Configure asks you if you want to do so (assuming Configure runs
- ok on your system). A future release of newspak will include a
- config.sh for NNTP reading as well as the existing one for local
- reading for those of us who are still 'bash-impaired' :-)
-
- There are dozens of command line switches for trn to get all kinds
- of behavior. Read the 'trn' man page for details. I use a nice
- feature to set all the switches easily:
- - add all the settings in a file called ~/.trnrc
- - export TRNINIT="~/.trnrc"
-
- A future newspak will have my .trnrc file as an example.
-
- trn3.2 and above has support for NOV or mthreads threading
- that's user-selectable. Accordingly, I recommend building the
- software to allow both threading mechanisms (it's a question in
- Configure). To pick one at runtime, try 'trn -Zo' for NOV and 'trn
- -Zt' for mthreads.
-
- To build the mthreads database, do something like the following
- in the 'news' crontab:
-
- # thread the trn database
- 35 * * * * /usenet/bin/mthreads all
-
-
- 4.3 NN
-
- The newspak-2.0.tar.z distribution on sunsite contains working
- config files for nn6.4.18 that you can drop into place and type
- 'make' under Linux.
-
- When you're done compiling, you need to do the following:
- - run the 'inst' program to install things.
- (install everything)
- - initialize the database
- - fire up nnmaster
-
- See the nn docs for details. Compiling, configuring, and running
- nn under Linux is no different than running nn on any other *nix
- with the exception that you probably want to run nnmaster as a cron
- entry rather than as a daemon. If you run it as a daemon under
- linux, it doesn't tend to wake up properly (the net effect of
- running it from cron is the same anyway).
-
- Support of 'nn' is as simple as the following crontab entries:
-
- # run nnmaster to collect 'nn' stuff
- 25 * * * * /usenet/sw/nn/lib/nnmaster
-
- # expire the nn database
- 0 4 * * * /usenet/sw/nn/bin/nnadmin =EYW
-
- # stash a copy of the active file for 'nngoback' and keep last 7
- 0 3 * * * /usenet/sw/nn/lib/back_act 7
-
-
- 4.4 Other newsreaders
-
- The following is a non-inclusive list of newsreaders said to
- install and run under Linux:
-
- tass, xrn, gnus
-
-
- 5.0 Acknowledgements
-
-
- The following people have helped in the assembly of the information
- (and experience) that helped make this document possible:
-
- Ed Carp, Steve Robbins, Ian Taylor, Greg Naber, Matt Welsh,
- Iain Lea, Arjan de Vet
-
- If I forgot anybody, my apologies...
-
- #=============================================================================
-
- 6.0 Frequently Asked Questions about USENET (in c.o.l.* anyway...)
-
- 6.1 Why can't I post to moderated groups ?
-
- Probably because the newsreader is trying to call /bin/mail to send
- the mail and it doesn't like it. Replace the /bin/mail in SLS with
- the port of mailx-5.3b.tar.z from the pub/Linux/system/Mail dir on
- sunsite.unc.edu and make it mode 2755 and group mail (like 'elm')
- and you'll be all set.
-
- Another possibility is that you have a moderated newsgroup set up
- on your local system as not-moderated and somebody upstream is
- quietly deleting the article (some system's software, not a
- person). Make sure you run a 'checkgroups' every now and then when
- the checkgroups article rolls by in news.admin every few weeks.
-
-
- 6.2 Why do I have problems that appear to be permission-related ?
-
- Because until very recently, SLS didn't have a 'news' username or
- group in the default passwd/group files.
-
- All the stuff in /usr/local/lib/news should be news.news except
- /usr/local/lib/news/setnewsids which should be setuid root.
-
- You can use whatever UID and GID you want for 'news'.
-
-
- 6.3 Why can I post articles locally, but they don't get fed downstream ?
-
- Probably because you didn't call newsrun from cron. Maybe because
- you edited your sys file and messed it up. There are examples of
- each in the SLS /usr/local/lib/news directory. Maybe because you
- don't have a /usr/spool/news/out.going tree or something.
-
- Do not create newsgroups or feeds by editing the active or sys
- files. Use the utilities in /usr/local/lib/news/bin/maint to do
- it.
-
-
- 6.4 Why doesn't SLS have the 'Performance Release' of C-news?
-
- Because it's optional. Because it has problems under Linux in some
- places. Because the one in SLS is more stable and plenty fast
- enough on any type of reasonable system (IMHO). If you need any
- more convincing, here's a few excerpts from the C-news README.new
- file:
-
- "This is the 20 Feb 1993 Performance Release of C News, a
- minor update to the 2 May 1992 P.R. that just fixes some
- installation problems and a couple of annoying bugs"...
-
- "This release is more or less a halfway step to what we've
- been calling the "cleanup release"...
-
- "People who are happy with the older C News might want to
- wait for the cleanup release, which is still coming
- although behind schedule"...
-
- Mainly because at the time SLS1.01 came out, the compilers and libs
- didn't like the Performance Release too much.
-
-
- 6.5 Why doesn't SLS have nntp ?
-
- Because it's supposed to be plug-n-play under Linux and because I
- didn't want to make SLS's news stuff doubly big by having to
- maintain both nntp and non-nntp versions of the newsreaders and
- news transport programs. Also because it compiles in localized
- information that is not overridable at runtime via a config file.
-
-
- 6.6 Why does doexpire (or relaynews or...) say "severe space shortage" when
- there's lots of room ?
-
- Because it can't read /etc/mtab. Make it mode 644. This happens
- when you unmount a mounted filesystem by root with a umask that
- doesn't permit world-read of files owned by root.
-
-
- 6.7 Why does everything look normal, but posting doesn't happen ?
-
- Older versions of Linux had a 'broken' sed that C-news was prone
- to blow up. In particular, if you've installed over an old SLS,
- be sure to check /bin and /usr/bin to be certain you have only
- one copy of sed and that it's a modern one.
-
-
- 6.8 Can I hook the new news overview (NOV) stuff into trn/tin/nn to replace
- the various independent thread databases ?
-
- Yes. trn3.3 supports it now. The next version of tin will.
-
- You can hook it into the Performance Release of Cnews and various
- other readers as well...
-
- The beta copy of nn6.5 I have here has NOV support and it works just
- dandy under Linux. I run it here and have nn running without having to
- run nnmaster (!). Look on uniwa.uwa.edu for a copy of it.
-
-
- 6.9 Why can't we have a binary distribution of NNTP ?
-
- Because significant local-only information is compiled-in and
- cannot be determined auto-magically at runtime.
-
-
- 6.10 How do I set up NNTP to allow read/post across the network while *not*
- storing any news articles or databases locally.
-
- [... mdw@sunsite.unc.edu (Matt Welsh) ...]
-
- 1) Grab the 'reference implementation' of nntp and a copy or rn
- from your local archive site. If you connect to ftp.uu.net
- you'd grab:
-
- nntp.1.5.11.tar.Z from ftp.uu.net:/news/nntp
- rn-4.4.pl3.tar.Z from ftp.uu.net:/news/rn
-
- 2) compile nntp as follows:
-
- copy common/conf.h.dist to common/conf.h.
- Edit common/conf.h to set certain options:
- The only ones I set were:
-
- DOMAIN: undefine it (i.e. change the line to #undef DOMAIN).
- REALDOMAIN: Define this. It looks up the domain using
- the libraries.
-
- SERVER_FILE: Set this to the name of the file which will
- contain the hostname of the news server (i.e. the
- machine you'll read and post news through). I use
- "/usr/local/lib/news/server".
-
- PASSFILE: If your news server requires authorization (i.e.
- some kind of username/password) to post, set this to
- the name of the file which contains the username and
- password (described below). I use
- "/usr/local/lib/news/nntppass".
-
- I decided to keep all of the other news stuff in /usr/local/lib/news.
- So I set all of the rest of the pathnames in the file (i.e.
- ACTIVE_FILE, NEWSGROUPS_FILE, etc.) to use /usr/local/lib/news. Many
- of these files are only used by the NNTP server, not the client, but
- to be safe I changed them all to point to the right directory. You can
- of course use the default pathnames; just make sure you create the
- directory accordingly.
-
- 3) Create the user "usenet" if you haven't already. The inews program
- runs as this user. All you need is a userid; you don't need a home
- directory or shell or anything for the user. Just plop the following
- line into your /etc/passwd:
-
- usenet:*:13:1::/:
-
- Make sure you set the userid ("13", above) to something unique. The
- group can be anything; I use "daemon" (gid 1).
-
- 4) Create the SERVER_FILE, above. For example, my news server is
- "wonton.tc.cornell.edu", so I created the file
- /usr/local/lib/news/server which contained one line:
- wonton.tc.cornell.edu
-
- 5) Create the PASSFILE. This file contains lines of the form
- <server name> <username> <password>
-
- Let's say that your news server (the one in SERVER_FILE, above) is
- "shoop.vpizza.com", and to post on that machine you need to be
- authorized as the user "news" with a password of "floof". Thus, in the
- PASSFILE (I use /usr/local/lib/news/nntppass), you need the line
- shoop.vpizza.com news floof
-
- 6) Make this file secure! The inews program runs as the user "usenet",
- so make this news directory owned by that user and the nntppass file
- as well.
-
- chown usenet /usr/local/lib/news
- chmod 755 /usr/local/lib/news
- chown usenet /usr/local/lib/news/nntppass
- chmod 600 /usr/local/lib/news/nntppass
-
- So nobody else can read this file. No, the passwords in it are not
- encrypted.
-
- 7) Go back to the nntp.1.5.11 source directory; issue "make client".
- At this point you'll build the NNTP version of inews, which is the
- only software used by the NNTP client.
-
- When I built inews, there was a bug in the library which caused the
- function uname() in uname.c to call itself eternally. This should be
- gone now; however, if inews seems to hang and your system starts
- slowing down *a lot* you should rename the function "uname()" in
- uname.c to something like "my_uname()", and change the calls to it (in
- inews.c) to call my_uname() instead. Mail me if you run into this
- problem.
- [...VDS note - this means mail to Matt...not me :-) ...]
-
- 8) Issue "make install_client". This will install the inews stuff.
- Also make the link /usr/local/lib/news/inews -> /usr/local/bin/inews
-
- Now you should be able to happily post (by hand). Try something like
- the following:
-
- $ inews -h << EOF
- Newsgroups: misc.test
- From: me@foo.bar.com
- Subject: Testing
- Reply-To: my-real-address@wherever.edu
-
- This is a test.
- EOF
-
- If this works, inews should post the article. You'll know because
- test-responders on misc.test will reply to the address on the Reply-To
- line, above. Please don't do test postings on real groups, like c.o.l.
- :)
-
-
- 6.11 How do I build 'rrn' as a nntp-based newsreader/poster ?
-
- [... mdw@sunsite.unc.edu (Matt Welsh) ...]
-
- 1. cd to the rn source directory and do "./Configure". For almost all
- the questions, take the defaults (it's very smart). Make sure you
- have a link to "cpp" (usually in /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-linux/2.3.3) in
- /lib, so rn can find it.
-
- - Don't panic if it says you're on a NeXT or a USG system. Just go
- with the flow...
-
- - Answer "y" to "Do you expect to run these scripts and binaries on
- multiple machines?"
-
- - For your domain name: if your system is, say, "foo.bar.com", answer
- with just "bar.com" (the domain, not the entire hostname).
-
- - Answer "usenet" for the name of the user which is the news admin.
-
- - For "Where is your news library?" use the directory where the above
- NNTP files are kept: I use /usr/local/lib/news.
-
- - Man page source is in /usr/man/man1.
-
- - Answer "y" to "Does your /etc/passwd file keep full names in
- Berkeley/V7 format?"
-
- - Answer "gcc" to the name of the compiler which forces resolution.
-
- - Answer "y" to "Do you want to build the NNTP version of rn (rrn)?"
-
- - For the name of the news server file: use the same name you used
- when building inews, above (for me, /usr/local/lib/news/server).
-
- Don't run makedepend yet! Go to the next step:
-
- 2) Edit config.h. Change the "#define ROOTID ..." line to
- #define ROOTID 0
- if it isn't already.
-
- 3) In rrn-4.4.pl3, there is a small bug with SIGEMT: it doesn't exist
- on Linux. rn used SIGEMT to check if a process is still running;
- however, under POSIX.1 we can instead just send the process a
- signal 0.
-
- Edit init.c. On line 243, note the following:
- if (kill(processnum, SIGEMT)) {
- Change this to
- if (kill(processnum, 0)) {
-
- You may wish to #ifdef it out instead; it's up to you. Don't just define
- SIGEMT to be zero; this will break the sigignore() call in final.c.
-
- 4) Issue "makedepend > makedepend.out".
-
- 5) Issue "make". Rn should compile happily.
-
- 6) Issue "make install".
-
- You're all set. Keep in mind that rn does in fact eat a lot of memory
- (as does any newsreader), handling the newsgroups file. So when you
- first run rn, it might be a little slow building your .newsrc and
- checking for new groups. If you're impatient, copy a .newsrc from
- somewhere else and use that.
-
-