7. Frequently Asked Questions about USENET (in c.o.l.* anyway)

7.1 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 old versions of SLS with the port of mailx-5.5.tar.z from a modern Slackware and use Slackware's pkgtool to install the kit 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.

7.2 Why do I have problems that appear to be permission-related ?

Because they are :-)

Check to see that your permissions are right and that you have a "news" username and group in /etc/passwd and /etc/group that matches the binary distribution you grabbed. It seems that there is not yet a Linux-standard for commonly available accounts.

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".

7.3 Why can I post articles locally, but they don't show up or get fed downstream ?

Probably because you didn't call newsrun from cron. Maybe because you edited your sys file and messed it up. Maybe because you don't have a /usr/spool/news/out.going tree or something. Maybe because you grabbed a distribution that has the 'Performance' or 'Cleanup' releases of Cnews, which batch things up and need 'newsrun' running from cron to process them to feed the other sites and to have them visible locally.

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.

7.4 Why doesn't my binary distribution 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.

7.5 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.

7.6 Why does everything look normal, but posting doesn't happen ?

Older versions of Linux had a "broken" sed that Cnews 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.

Because as of the 'Performance Release' in about February 1993, you have to have 'newsrun' run from cron periodically to process things. That's a feature that apparently suprises some people.

7.7 Can I hook the new news overview (NOV) stuff into trn/tin/nn to replacethe various independent thread databases ?

Yes. trn, tin, and the beta of nn support it now.

You can hook it into the Performance and Cleanup Releases 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.au for a copy of it.

7.8 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. If you're that into things, please grab INN rather than rolling your own with Cnews plus NNTP.

7.9 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:/networking/news/nntp
• 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 link /usr/local/lib/news/inews to /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. :)