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.
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. The current version at this writing is called "Cnews Cleanup Release, with patch CR.G".
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.
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 'Cleanup Release' claims that "Overview support has been fully integrated and is faster than it used to be." The result is that you can do things like use Cnews NOV support rather than running external threading packages for newsreaders such as nn, tin, and trn.
I haven't quite figured how to implement this part yet, since I switched to INN at home long ago. If anybody wants to clue me in to update this document, please drop me a line via e-mail.
The newspak distribution on sunsite contains working config files
for the Cnews Cleanup Release under Linux as well as a couple line patch
you'll need to make to "doexplode" to get around some problems with
bash1.12.
Basically you run the new 'quiz' script and take the defaults. You'll have to refer to your /usr/include tree to answer a number of the questions, but that's rather straightforward.
Installing the Cleanup Release of Cnews is absolutely a "rtfm" project. Just grab the sources, extract them, and follow the instructions.
The quiz.def in newspak was generated by running "quiz" the first time and
simply looking up the answers by checking out the /usr/include files to get
the right answers.
You'll need a recent 'bash' to have C-news pass its self-tests. Try 'bash -version' to find which version you have. Version 1.14.2 is definitely no good. The current (at this writing) version of 1.14.5 seems better.
Steve Robbins also has determined that the recent 'cleanup release' of Cnews has found a bug in GNU 'join' from shellutils-1.9. There are a few patches needed to the sources for join to deal with the problem. Steve's put them on sunsite as I recall.
At the very least, you need to edit or at least take a look at 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
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 manually (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
# also, post (locally) articles that originated here
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
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.
I've run up to a 5 MB/night newsfeed incoming over UUCP with INN on a 8 MB 386-33 (no Xwindows running normally) over a 14.4 KB modem with no problems at all.
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.
INN is also very particular about having a "quality" TCP/IP to work with. Linux is not necessarily all the way there at this time, so it is recommended that you grab a Linux-specific INN distribution from one of the usual Linux archive sites.
( 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).
Basically follow Arjan's instructions and you'll be all set. Here's the summary of what to do:
"HAVE_UNIX_DOMAIN DONT"/etc/inetd.conf"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.syslogd
stuff because it is very, very helpful.rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/news for it. You'll be glad you did.
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 )
The following is a non-inclusive list of other news transport software known to work under Linux: