Re: [leafnode-list] Basic configuration questions form a Linux Newbie

[krasel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Cornelius Krasel)]

David Oddie wrote:

> Step 3. create a "news" user.  First question :- I take it I need a
> user called "news"?

Yes. On most - if not all - distributions, this user already exists.

> Step 4.  Should "make install" be run as "news"?

"root" is better. "news" usually cannot write into /usr/local (or
whereever you will install leafnode).

> Step 6. States "Make sure $NNTPSERVER or /etc/nntpserver points to
> your own host.................."
> 
> I am lost here.  What is my "own host"?  How can I find it out or set
> it up should I need to?

Your "own host" is your computer. You can either put a fully qualified
domain name into /etc/nntpserver (or set $NNTPSERVER to that), or just
use "localhost" (or its IP number, 127.0.0.1) instead.

> Step 7.  I know nothing about cron.  My computer is not left on all
> the time so I think I will need to texpire manually or in some other
> way such as when I reboot (not every time but periodically if you see
> what I mean).  What is the best way to do that?

You might want to use "anacron", as suggested by Mark Brown already.
This is a cron daemon which runs a cron job at the given time OR when
the computer is available.

> I also like to keep articles a LONG time.  Is there a way to archive
> them away from being "texpire'ed"?

Do you just think of _some_ articles in _some_ groups? That is not
possible. If you think of _all_ articles in _some_ groups, you can
set "groupexpire" of these groups to a high value. 365 won't expire
articles for one year, so 9999 should be enough for all practical
purposes.

> Step 8 running fetchnews.
> 
> I don't tend to log as root routinely so I ma not sure how fetchnews
> is going to run.  The obvious option is to run it when the connection
> to the net is established.

Put the call into /etc/ppp/ipp-up (or whatever that file is called).

> Is this what step 9 is about?

No. Step 9 makes sure that nobody abuses your news server when you are
online by posting lots of articles to it. In other words, it blocks
access to your server for anyone except you.

--Cornelius.

-- 
/* Cornelius Krasel, U Wuerzburg, Dept. of Pharmacology, Versbacher Str. 9 */
/* D-97078 Wuerzburg, Germany   email: phak004@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  SP4 */
/* "Science is the game we play with God to find out what His rules are."  */

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