Linux Network Administrator Guide, Second Edition

you edit a configuration file that tells INN some detail about your operating system, and some features may require minor modifications to the source itself.

Compiling the package itself is pretty simple; there's a script called BUILD that will guide you through the process. The source also contains extensive documentation on how to install and configure INN.

After installing all binaries, some manual fixups may be required to reconcile INN with any other applications that may want to access its rnews or inews programs. UUCP, for instance, expects to find the rnews program in /usr/bin or /bin, while INN installs it in /usr/lib/bin by default. Make sure /usr/lib/bin/ is in the default search path, or that there are symbolic links pointing to the actual location of the rnews and inews commands.

Configuring INN: the Basic Setup

One of the greatest obstacles beginners may face is that INN requires a working network setup to function properly, even when running on a standalone host. Therefore, it is essential that your kernel supports TCP/IP networking when running INN, and that you have set up the loopback interface as explained in Chapter 5, Configuring TCP/IP Networking.

Next, you have to make sure that innd is started at boot time. The default INN installation provides a script file called boot in the /etc/news/ directory. If your distribution uses the SystemV-style init package, all you have to do is create a symbolic link from your /etc/init.d/inn file pointing to /etc/news/boot. For other flavors of init, you have to make sure /etc/news/boot is executed from one of your rc scripts. Since INN requires networking support, the startup script should be run after the network interfaces are configured.

INN Configuration Files

Having completed these general tasks, you can now turn to the really interesting part of INN: its configuration files. All these files reside in /etc/news. Some changes to configurations files were introduced in Version 2, and it is Version 2 that we describe here. If you're running an older version, you should find this chapter useful to guide you in upgrading your configuration. During the next few sections, we will discuss them one by one, building the Virtual Brewery's configuration as an example.

If you want to find out more about the features of individual configuration files, you can also consult the manual pages; the INN distribution contains individual manual pages for each of them.

Global Parameters

There are a number of INN parameters that are global in nature; they are relevant to all newsgroups carried.

The inn.conf file

INN's main configuration file is inn.conf. Among other things, it determines the name by which your machine is known on Usenet. Version 2 of INN allows a baffling number of parameters to be configured in this file. Fortunately, most parameters have default values that are reasonable for most sites. The inn.conf(5) file details all of the parameters, and you should read it carefully if you experience any problems.

A simple example inn.conf might look like:

# Sample inn.conf for the Virtual Brewery
server:          vlager.vbrew.com
domain:          vbrew.com
fromhost:        vbrew.com
pathhost:        news.vbrew.com
organization:    The Virtual Brewery
mta:             /usr/sbin/sendmail -oi %s
moderatormailer: %[email protected]
#
# Paths to INN components and files.
#
pathnews:               /usr/lib/news
pathbin:                /usr/lib/news/bin
pathfilter:             /usr/lib/news/bin/filter
pathcontrol:            /usr/lib/news/bin/control
pathdb:                 /var/lib/news
pathetc:                /etc/news
pathrun:                /var/run/news
pathlog:                /var/log/news
pathhttp:               /var/log/news
pathtmp:                /var/tmp
pathspool:              /var/spool/news
patharticles:           /var/spool/news/articles
pathoverview:           /var/spool/news/overview
pathoutgoing:           /var/spool/news/outgoing
pathincoming:           /var/spool/news/incoming
patharchive:            /var/spool/news/archive
pathuniover:            /var/spool/news/uniover
overviewname:           .overview

The first line tells the programs rnews and inews which host to contact when delivering articles. This entry is absolutely crucial; to pass articles to innd, they have to establish an NNTP connection with the server.

The domain keyword should specify the domain portion of the host's fully qualified domain name. A couple of programs must look up your host's fully qualified domain name; if your resolver library returns the unqualified hostname only, the name given in the domain attribute is tacked onto it. It's not a problem to configure it either way, so it's best to define domain.

The next line defines what hostname inews is going to use when adding a From: line to articles posted by local users. Most newsreaders use the From: field when composing a reply mail message to the author of an article. If you omit this field, it will default to your news host's fully qualifed domain name. This is ot always the best choice. You might, for example, have news and mail handled by two different hosts. In this case, you would supply the fully