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newsd.conf.pod

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NAME

newsd.conf - configuration files for erco's simple nntp news server

DESCRIPTION

Newsd(8) is a standalone local NNTP news server for private newsgroup serving on a single server. It is useful for serving private newsgroup(s) to an intranet or the Internet and can act as a simple mail gateway, however it does not interface with other news servers and cannot manage distributed news feeds, i.e. Usenet news.

Newsd uses three types of configuration files for each instance of the server: a global configuration file called "newsd.conf", a per-group configuration file called ".config", and a per-group status file called ".info".

THE NEWSD.CONF FILE

By default, newsd reads the file /etc/newsd.conf to obtain the global configuration for the server. The file is simple text and uses the "#" character to start comments. Each configuration line consists of a case-insensitive directive and a value separated by whitespace, for example:

ServerName foo.bar.com

The following directives are supported:

ErrorLog value

Specifies the file to use for logging information, errors, and debugging information. "stderr" specifies that the messages should be sent to the standard error file. "syslog" specifies that the messages should be logged via the syslog interface. If value begins with the pipe (|) character, the rest of the value is treated as a command to pipe the error messages into. Otherwise, value is treated as an absolute filename. The default is "stderr".

HostnameLookups value

When a client connects to the news server, this directive controls whether the server looks up the client's IP address. Value can be "off" to disable IP address lookups (the IP address will be logged instead), "on" to enable IP address lookups, or "double" to enable IP address lookup and verification. The default is "off".

Listen address:port
Listen port

Listens on the specified address and/or port number for new connections. Address can be an IP address, hostname, or "*" to specify the "any" address; if no address is specified, "*" is assumed. Port can be a port number or TCP service name. The default is to listen on address "*" (any) and port "nntp" (119).

LogLevel value

Specifies the amount of information to log; "error" specifies that only error messages should be logged. "info" specifies that informational and error messages should be logged. "debug" specifies that debugging, informational, and error messages should be logged. The default is "info".

MaxClients number

Specifies the maximum number of simultaneous clients. If number is 0, then there is no limit. The default is 0.

MaxLogSize value

Specifies the maximum size for the newsd log file before it's automatically rotated. Value is in bytes. A value of 0 disables automatic size checks. The default is 1000000.

ServerName name

Specifies the hostname that is reported to clients. The default is the name reported by hostname(1).

SendMail command

Specifies the command to use when sending mail messages. The default is "/usr/local/sbin/sendmail".

SpoolDir directory

Specifies the root directory for newsgroup files and directories. The default is "/var/spool/newsd".

Timeout seconds

Specifies the number of seconds to keep an idle news client connection open; specify 0 to disable the idle timeout. The default is 43200 seconds (12 hours).

User name

Specifies the user account the newsd process will run under. The default user account is "news".

Auth.User username
Auth.Pass password
Auth.Protect read|post|all
Auth.Sleep seconds

Sets the username and password used to authenticate access to the news server. Auth.Protect sets which operations the user/password protects; "read" protects read access only, "post" protects posting access only, "all" protects both read and post access.

To disable authentication completely, set Auth.User, Auth.Pass and Auth.Protect to dash (-).

Auth.Sleep sets the delay (in seconds) between failed attempts. [default=5]

Example: Leaves reading and posting 'open', without any authentication:

Auth.User      -
Auth.Pass      -
Auth.Protect   -

Example: Protects posting with the username 'foo' password 'bar', while allowing anonymous read access:

Auth.User      foo
Auth.Pass      bar
Auth.Protect   post

Example: Protects reading and posting with the username 'foo' password 'bar':

Auth.User      foo
Auth.Pass      bar
Auth.Protect   all
NoRecurseMsgDir [yes|no]

If enabled, prevents newsd from looking for subgroups in dirs that contain messages.

When the message dirs are large (have many articles), it prevents some NNTP operations from having to walk these large dirs.

Disable if you plan to have groups that contain msgs AND subgroups. Otherwise, leave enabled to help NNTP commands (eg. "LIST") respond quickly when groups have many articles.

MsgModDirs [yes|no]

Optimization: save articles in subdirs modulus 1000

Use this if groups will contain many thousands of articles. Helps prevent OS having to walk large linear directories of articles. Enabling this feature ensures there are no more than 1000 articles in a dir at a time.

So when disabled, articles are saved this way:

/path/fltk/general/0/{1,2,3..99998,99999,100000,100001..}

..and when this feature is enabled, articles are saved this way:

/path/fltk/general/0/{1,2,3..998,999}
/path/fltk/general/1000/{1000,1001,1002..1998,1999}
/path/fltk/general/2000/{2000,2001,2002..2998,2999}
..etc..

If enabled, then groups cannot have entirely numeric names (eg. "alt.1000"), to prevent newsd from confusing message dirs with group names.

NEWSGROUP FILES AND DIRECTORY

The /var/spool/news directory contains all the newsgroups and articles with one file per article and one directory per newsgroup.

The directory hierarchy dictates the available news groups, e.g.

/var/spool/news/rush/general

is the directory for the 'rush.general' news group, and in that directory will be one file per news article, each filename being the article's number, eg:

/var/spool/news/rush/general/1
/var/spool/news/rush/general/2
/var/spool/news/rush/general/3

would be the pathnames for the three news articles whose article numbers are 1, 2 and 3. Each article contains the complete ascii text of the article, including the article's header and message body, as per RFC 1036.

The directory permissions should be:

chown -R news.news /var/spool/news
find /var/spool/news -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find /var/spool/news -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

Each active newsgroup's directory has its own .config file. For example, the newsgroup 'rush.general' would have a .config file called:

/var/spool/news/rush/general/.config

which might look like:

description Rush render queue discussion group
creator     news@news.domain.com
postok      1
postlimit   1000
ccpost      erco@domain.com
replyto -

Any newsgroup directory that does not have a .config file will not show up in users' news readers.

Manual modification of these files should be done carefully if the newsd daemon is running. Do the following to prevent newsd from loading a file while it is being edited:

1) Make a copy of the file called ".config.new".

2) Modify the copy.

3) Rename the copy to ".config" to make it take effect.

THE .CONFIG FILE FORMAT

Each group's .config file is in a simple plain text format similar to newsd.conf:

description text

Specifies the one line description of this group, which shows up when people first subscribe to the newsgroup.

creator email-address

Specifies the email address of the owner of this group. Where mail should be sent regarding questions about the maintenance and administration of the group. This address is also used as the Errors-To: address for all email messages sent by newsd.

postok value

Controls whether articles can be posted to this group. "0" indicates posting is not allowed (read-only group) while "1" indicates anyone can post to this group. The default value is "1".

postlimit number-lines

Specifies the maximum number of lines in an article. Articles will be rejected if they exceed this value. Set this value to "0" to disable the limit. The default limit is "1000".

ccpost address[,address,...]
ccpost -

Sets the list of email addresses to be cc'ed whenever a posting is made to the group. If set to '-', no email is sent. A single line of addresses may not exceed 255 characters; to make longer lists of addresses, use separate lines, eg:

ccpost a@foo.com,b@foo.com,c@foo.com
ccpost d@foo.com

Or to make things more readable, use one address per line:

ccpost a@foo.com
ccpost b@foo.com
ccpost c@foo.com

The default is "-".

replyto email-address
replyto -

Specifies an email address for the Reply-To header. This forces replies to be sent to the specifies address, typically a mail gateway back to the newsgroup. If set to "-", no Reply-To header will be sent. The default is "-".

.INFO FILES

newsd automatically creates and maintains little ".info" files in each active group's directory. Each file maintains runtime information about that group's news articles.

Normally these files are automatically created and maintained, and should not be administered by hand unless manually fixing a problem, in which case the daemon should not be running.

SEE ALSO

newsd(8) -- erco's simple nntp news server
RFC 977 -- NNTP Protocol
RFC 2890 -- NNTP extensions
RFC 1036 -- Usenet news messages format

REPORTING BUGS

Report bugs using the form at "http://www.easysw.com/~mike/newsd/".

SUPPORTED NEWS READERS

newsd has been tested with Netscape, Mozilla, Microsoft Outlook and the tin(1) threaded news readers only. It should work with most NNTP news readers, however.

AUTHORS

Greg Ercolano, Topanga CA
Mike Sweet, Hollywood, MD

COPYRIGHT

newsd is copyright 2002-2004 by Greg Ercolano and Michael Sweet. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

NO WARRANTY

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.