06/05/96 v0.62 Description of INN files (FILES.descript)
Configuration of Linux Slackware INN_PKG for use with DEMON INTERNET SERVICES
Copyright (C) 1995,1996 Ivan A. Beveridge. ivan@dreamtim.demon.co.uk
This package is freely distributable.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following is a description of what the INN configuration files mean (for
more information read the relevant man pages):
active
------
This tells INN which newsgroups are on your computer (ie which ones you can
subscribe to from your news reader. This is *not necessarily* the same as
the ones that you are going to download (these are named in slurp.sys).
*Important* - do create/have the groups "control" and "junk". Control is
for the passing of news control messages, and junk is for the articles that
have no home to go to (eg. you have put a group in slurp.sys that you have
not put in active - the downloaded news will go to junk).
expire.ctl
----------
This tells INN how long you want news articles to remain on your system.
/remember/:14 means keep the header info for 14 days, to ensure that
you do not receive the same article more than once.
*:A:1:10:21 means for all named groups, moderated and unmoderated,
keep the article for a minimum of 1 day, a default of
10 days, and a maximum of 21 days.
news.announce.newusers:A:never:never:never means keep all articles in the
news.announce.newusers group for ever.
hosts.nntp
----------
This tells INN which computers feed news. There are only two entries in this.
"pubnews.demon.co.uk" could be added but bear in mind that this is *not* a
guaranteed news server.
news.demon.co.uk:
YOURHOST.demon.co.uk: This means that you are able to "feed" news
to your site (from your news reader).
inn.conf
--------
This tells INN domain and other details about your News. This assumes that
you have an address in the form HOST.demon.co.uk (if not, change domain name),
and you are reading news off-line.
domain: demon.co.uk means that news articles posted from you will
be in domain demon.co.uk
#organisation: Home means that your organisation is called "Home"
(This is named in the article header info, but
is commented out here).
server: YOURHOST.demon.co.uk This sets the default NNTP server that you will
use to *read* news. This is for when you dis-
connect from Demon, and want to read news
locally.
moderators
----------
This is only included as a reminder. I have included the line for
comp.os.linux.announce. If you do not setup the moderators file properly, you
any articles you send to moderated groups will be silently deleted by some
other computer once you have sent the message to Demon. Either look at the
"moderators" file, or look at the man pages (man moderators) to find out how
to set this up. It is not vital, hence no more discussion.
newsfeeds
---------
This tells INN where to send articles that you post:
ME:*:: This means send all articles to your own computer.
OVERVIEW!:*:Tc,WO:/usr/lib/news/bin/overchan
This is needed for the NOV threading to work. It
saves article header details.
demon/news.demon.co.uk\
:*,!control,!junk\
:Tf,Wnm:
This tells INN to send articles that have not been sent
through news.demon.co.uk to the site with the "demon"
entry in the nntpsend.ctl file. It states which groups
to send - in this case everything except for those in
the control and junk newsgroups - notice the "!" which
means "not").
"demon" is an alias for the news.demon.co.uk site.
The "\" at the end of the lines mean "think of this as
a continuation line".
nnrp.access
-----------
This tells INN which computers are allowed to read and post articles (*not*
those which are newsfeeds):
*:: -no- : -no- :!* means, by default, no-one is allowed to read
or post articles to your machine (not even
your own machine!).
YOURHOST.demon.co.uk:Read Post:::*
means that you machine can read and post
articles to all newsgroups. Ensure that you
put you host name in place of YOURHOST.
(Note, if you have a domain name like
HOST.YOURCO.co.uk, change the name to this.
nntpsend.ctl
------------
This tells INN where to send the news articles you have posted:
demon:news.demon.co.uk:: "demon" is the alias mentioned in the newsfeeds
file, and "news.demon.co.uk" is the full name
of the news host to post news to.
overview.fmt
------------
This explains the format of threading for NOV. The only think I have changed
is uncommenting the Xref: line, as recommended by the INN FAQ.
Xref:full
slurp.sys
---------
This is a configuration file for use with "slurp", which is included with
the slack2.1.help.tar.gz package, and names the news server to connect to
for downloading news articles, and which newsgroups to download:
news.demon.co.uk:\
comp.os.linux,\
comp.os.linux.announce
The news site is named before the colon, and
the newsgroups after, each group being
separated by a comma (the "\" is there to make
the file easy to read).
slurp.news.demon.co.uk
----------------------
This file contains a timestamp. This is the last time you downloaded news.
Set this to something reasonable - say yesterday. The format for the time is:
YYMMDD HHMMSS
If the file is not there, it apparently defaults to 1st January 1986! You
have been warned!
In Slurp v1.10, this also may include news headers of articles that have not
yet been downloaded (but will be on the next attempt).