Chapter 23. Internet News

Table of Contents
23.1. Some INN Internals
23.2. Newsreaders and INN
23.3. Installing INN
23.4. Configuring INN: the Basic Setup
23.5. INN Configuration Files
23.5.1. Global Parameters
23.5.2. Configuring Newsgroups
23.5.3. Configuring Newsfeeds
23.5.4. Controlling Newsreader Access
23.5.5. Expiring News Articles
23.5.6. Handling Control Messages
23.6. Running INN
23.7. Managing INN: The ctlinnd Command
23.7.1. Add a New Group
23.7.2. Change a Group
23.7.3. Remove a Group
23.7.4. Renumber a Group
23.7.5. Allow/Disallow Newsreaders
23.7.6. Reject Newsfeed Connections
23.7.7. Allow Newsfeed Connections
23.7.8. Disable News Server
23.7.9. Restart News Server
23.7.10. Display Status of a Newsfeed
23.7.11. Drop a Newsfeed
23.7.12. Begin a Newsfeed
23.7.13. Cancel an Article

The Internet News daemon (INN) is arguably the most popular Netnews server in use today. INN is extremely flexible and is suitable for all but the smallest news sites.[1] INN scales well and is suited to large news server configurations.

The INN server comprises a number of components, each with their own configuration files that we will discuss in turn. Configuration of INN can be a little involved, but we'll describe each of the stages in this chapter and arm you with enough information to make sense of the INN manual pages and documentation and build configurations for just about any application.

Notes

[1]

Very small news sites should consider a caching NNTP server program like leafnode, which is available at http://wpxx02.toxi.uni-wuerzburg.de/~krasel/leafnode.html.