As long as PPP is active, it will be possible to read news
online. There are lots of available programs. Two
simple alternatives are rtin and trn.
To start reading news, the only thing required in terms of
configuration in most cases is to do (usually once and for all in
the file .profile):
export NNTPSERVER=news.acme.net
To get the From-address correct in postings, some programs may require:
export NNTP_INEWS_DOMAIN=acme.net
To be able to read news while offline, and thus reduce phone bills and give greater flexibility, one must set up a local news-spool of one sort or the other. This requires some configuration, and there will also be a certain amount of disk space involved. After initial setup, things should run more or less by themselves, with only some attention needed from time to time.
Two different solutions will be described here.
The solution described here is based on the news-server C News and the NNTP protocol. C News was originally targeted towards another sort of configuration, but is flexible enough to handle our situation too. One might also use the more recent INN news server, but it might require a bit more in terms of resources. Any way, be careful not to install both; they don't live together easily.
It is crucial that all maintenance of news is done while logged
in as user news, and that all configuration files is
placed in /usr/lib/news. One way of handling this is,
while logged in as root to write su news; cd.
The most important files in the configuration are:
active is an overview over active newsgroups. It
is updated as required by the command addgroup, e.g.
addgroup comp.os.linux.networking y.organization should simply contain whatever you
want in the Organization: header field, in our case:
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
mailname should in our case be set to
acme.net.whoami is set to the name of your site
in the Path: thread. In a setup as described here,
using NewsX, this name will never leave the machine, so
you can set this to whatever you like as long as you are pretty
sure it is unique. In this case roderick.sys controls fetching and further distribution of
news. We will assume the ISP in our case adds acme.net
to the Path, and that this is the only news source we have. The
example given really tells that we will accept everything that
arrives, and that we will only post news to acme.net
that it hasn't seen before, and is originally posted at our own
site. In this simplified setup we assume that the all groups
will come from a single source. /all specifies the
distribution, and must be included. The letter
F says that (pointers to) outgoing news articles will be
collected in a file.
ME:all/all::
acme/acme.net:all,!junk/all:FL:
mkdir /var/spool/news/out.going/acme
mailpaths controls posting in moderated groups,
although this task may usually be left to the ISP.C News needs a certain degree of daily maintenance, but this can
be specified once and for all via the command crontab -e
issued as user news. A suggested setup follows; it can
be tuned as required:
# maintain incoming and outgoing batches
10,40 * * * * /usr/lib/newsbin/input/newsrun
# expire C News, once a day
30 0 * * * /usr/lib/newsbin/expire/doexpire
# monitor and report if needed
00 2 * * sat /usr/lib/newsbin/maint/addmissing
40 3 * * * /usr/lib/newsbin/maint/newswatch
50 3 * * * /usr/lib/newsbin/maint/newsdaily
One should also ensure that things are cleaned up when starting
the machine. As user root, add the following line to
/etc/rc.d/rc.local:
su news -c /usr/lib/newsbin/maint/newsboot
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/News/newsx-0.1.tar.gz
Or:
ftp://ftp.sn.no/user/egilk/newsx-0.3.tar.gz
Setting up NewsX is quite simple. Installation is a
classic case of:
make
su
make install
exit
With the setup outlined here, all you have to do is to create the groups you want to read using the "addgroup" command.
To fetch articles, user news issues the following
commands (assuming communication via PPP or similar is up):
newsrun
newsx acme news.acme.net
newsrun
The option -d gives continuous printout to the screen.
Refer to the NewsX documentation for further information.
NewsX will also take care of posting of outgoing news.
To control disposal of articles as they get old, a file
explist is required. The comments in this example
should explain what we want to do:
# hold onto history lines 14 days, nobody gets >120 days
/expired/ x 14 -
/bounds/ x 0-1-120 -
# retain these for 2 months
comp.sources,comp.os.linux.all x 60 -
# noise gets thrown away fast
junk,control x 2 -
# default: 14 days, no archive
all x 14 -
ALT: In a small news-spool, one will often not need the
newsgroup control. The traffic is huge
compared to the usefulness. The main point is that articles will
be canceled, and that groups may be created automatically. To
ensure that control messages containing newgroup not
shall mess up things for us, a file called newgroupperm
specifies what we will allow:
comp.os.linux tale@uunet.com yv
all any nq
news will be notified (v).
Everything else will be silently (q) ignored (n). The last line
is sufficient if you want to create all groups manually.
ALT: Alternatives to NewsX are suck, or
slurp combined with postit. Slurp uses the
NNTP NEWNEWS which will put severe loads on many news server.
A different solution altogether is to install the integrated
package leafnode. This will handle all tasks required
for a personal news spool, and is easy to configure. It is
available via:
http://www.troll.no/freebies/leafnode.html
As for C News, all news maintenance should be performed as user
news.
The home directory for leafnode is in
/usr/lib/leafnode. To install, write:
cd /usr/lib/leafnode
tar -xzvf leafnode-0.8.tgz
cd leafnode-0.8
make
su
make install
While still being logged in as root, change the line
that controls NNTP in /etc/inetd.conf:
nntp stream tcp nowait news /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/local/sbin/leafnode
killall -HUP inetd
Return to user news by writing exit. In
/usr/lib/leafnode/config change the line that defines
the NNTP server. In our case:
server = news.acme.net
Leafnode will look after itself by adding the following command
via crontab -e as user news:
# expire Leafnode, once a day
0 4 * * * /usr/local/sbin/texpire
The news exchange is also done as user news by the
following command (assuming PPP is up and running):
/usr/local/sbin/fetch
Users who wants to read news should then use the recipe in How do I set up an online news-reader?, except that they configure for the local machine, i.e:
export NNTPSERVER=localhost
That should be all there is to it. The first fetch will
transfer a list of available newsgroups. Leafnode will then
monitor what groups the users are requesting, and adapt to this
the next time it is activated.
ALT: An alternative to leafnode is
nntpcache, available from:
ftp://ftp.suburbia.net/pub/nntpcache/nntpcache.tgz