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

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

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## 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 SLS with the port of mailx-5.3b.tar.z from the pub/Linux/system/Mail/mailhandlers 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.

## 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 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.

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 the "Performance Release" of C-news?

Because it's optional. Because it has problems under Linux in some places. Because the Pre-Performance Release Cnews 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. Things are better now.

## 7.5 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.

## 7.6 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.

## 7.7 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.

If you're running the "Performance Release" of Cnews, posting runs from cron which suprises some people.

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

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

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.au for a copy of it.

## 7.9 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.

## 7.10 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:/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. :)

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