From: Tom_Limoncelli@Warren.MENTORG.COM (Tom Limoncelli)
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp,news.software.b,news.answers
Subject: FAQ: INN General Information (and compiling) (Part 1 of 2)
Followup-To: news.software.nntp
Date: 23 Jan 1993 04:45:07 -0000
Organization: Mentor Graphics - IC Group, Warren, NJ, USA
Distribution: inet
Expires: 02/12/93
Reply-To: Tom_Limoncelli@Warren.MENTORG.COM (Tom Limoncelli)
NNTP-Posting-Host: sdl.warren.mentorg.com
Summary: Part 1: Common questions about INN itself, and some advice 
    when compiling it and installing it.  Part 2: This assumes that you've 
    successfully compiled the software.  This is a tutorial that takes you 
    through configuration and setting up feeds.  It ends with common questions 
    about INN configuration.

Posted-By: auto-faq 2.4
Archive-name: inn-faq/part1

Contents:
	What is INN?
	What machines does it run on?
	Can I run C News with INN?
	Can I run NNTP with INN?
	Can I run the reference implementation (NNTP1.5) with INN?
	Can I run INN on my UUCP-only machine?
	Suppose I have a 286 machine?
	Where can I get it?
	Why does innd just exit right away with no message?
	Does INN implement trn's XTHREADS, etc?
	I'm getting news but postings aren't going out.
	How come my host name comes out twice in the Path line?
	Expire had problems last night, and while I fixed the problem,
	Why does my innd often die with the message "Can't sync history,
	Why am I getting alt.sex.pictures even though I have
	Why doesn't this newsfeeds entry do what I want?
	Why am I forwarded cancel messages for articles in comp.foo
	Help!?  How do I configure this beast

(The FAQ was written by Rich $alz (rsalz@rodan.uu.net) and is now
maintained by Tom Limoncelli.)

------------------------------

Subject:  What is INN?

InterNetNews is a complete Usenet system.  The cornerstone of the package
is innd, an NNTP server that multiplexes all I/O.  Think of it as an nntpd
merged with the B News inews, or as a C News relaynews that reads multiple
NNTP streams.  Newsreading is handled by a separate server, nnrpd, that is
spawned for each client.  Both innd and nnrpd have some slight variances
from the NNTP protocol (although in normal use you will never notice); see
the manpages.  INN separates hosts that feed you news from those that have
users reading news.  If need to support a mixed environment you will have
to do some extra work; the installation manual gives some hints.


------------------------------

Subject:  What machines does it run on?

If you have socket() and select() then INN will probably run on your
machine.  In addition to the common platforms found around the Internet
(Sun and Ultrix, for example), INN runs on AIX, A/UX, NeXT, and a host of
others.


------------------------------

Subject:  Can I run C News with INN?

No.  INN handles all article reception, filing, forwarding, and
expiration.  You will most likely get a corrupted database if you try to
run INN with any other news system.  For testing, you can probably shut
down your old system, bring up INN, and then reverse the process.  (INN
uses the C News history file and DBZ database, so if you don't run C News
you will have to do some fiddling around with those files.)


------------------------------

Subject:  Can I run NNTP with INN?

There's a confusion here.  NNTP is a protocol, defined in RFC 977.  There
is also an implementation of the protocol, NNTP1.5, that many people call
NNTP.  When there was only one implementation of the protocol, that was
okay, but now that there are other implementations (for example, INN) it
is getting confusing.  It would be as if "sendmail" were named "smtp."
Please try to be clear -- do you mean the NNTP protocol, or the NNTP
reference implementation currently maintained by Stan Barber?


------------------------------

Subject:  Can I run the reference implementation (NNTP1.5) with INN?

The quick answer is no.  INN listens on the NNTP port and handles all
incoming traffic.  It receives articles, files them, and arranges for them
to be forwarded to your peers.  If a site connects that is not listed as a
peer (e.g., a local workstation that does newsreading) then the INN server
hands the connection off to another program.  By default, this is nnrpd,
which implements the NNTP protocol for newsreaders (for example, it
includes the POST command but not the IHAVE command).  You can run the
reference implementation server instead of nnrpd if you want.  Doing this
can be useful if you have clients that want to do both reading and article
transfer.


------------------------------

Subject:  Can I run INN on my UUCP-only machine?

Sure.  While not designed for this, several people are running INN on
machines that do not have IP-connectivity (such as UUCP-only hosts) and
are quite happy with it.  You might want to give it a try, especially if
you think you will be joining the Internet some day.


------------------------------

Subject:  Suppose I have a 286 machine?

Won't work.  INN is designed to be a memory hog; a server that has been up
for a few days while will have a working set size of a few to several
megabytes, although not all of it will be resident.  For example, the
server keeps the active file and list of who gets what in memory, as well
as all articles that it is receiving.  Unless you can do things like
"malloc(64 * 1024)" without pain, INN won't work on your machine.


------------------------------

Subject:  Where can I get it?

The official archive site is ftp.uu.net in the directory
networking/news/nntp/inn.  Archie current lists over 30 archive sites;
three other international sites are grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr in
pub/unix/news/inn, munnari.oz.au in pub/news/inn, and src.doc.ic.ac.uk in
computing/usenet/software/transport


------------------------------

Subject:  Why does innd just exit right away with no message?

First, fix your syslog: innd always logs a message before it exits.  (The
INN distribution includes a version of the current UCB syslog, along with
instructions on how to install it.  Ultrix systems might want to look at
the syslog that is available on gatekeeper.dec.com) Second, the most
common cause of this is that you do not have a history file (or no history
database).  You will see a message like this:
    ME cant dbminit /usr/local/news/history No such file or directory
This means that you do not have a history database.  You might want to run
the BUILD script in your INN source tree or read about makehistory in
doc/news-recovery.8; if you do the latter, make sure to rename the
database files.  This FAQ covers general questions about INN and questions
about how to compile it.  For information on configuration and debugging
one's configuration, see the "INN Configuration FAQ".


------------------------------

Subject:  Does INN implement trn's XTHREADS, tin's commands, etc?

The XTHREAD command has code but it is not supported; look at
$inn/nnrpd/nnrpd.h.  This code will probably vanish after 1.3.  Tin
commands are not supported.  Instead, INN supports Geoff Collyer's news
overview database, nov (world.std.com, src/news/nov.dist.tar.Z).  It does
not include the client package; it just updates and maintains the overview
databases.


------------------------------

Subject:  I'm getting news but postings aren't going out.

You might find it helpful to read "Appendix IV:  First-time Usenet or NNTP
Installation" in the Install manual.  In order for postings to go out, you
must have a newsfeeds entry that names a site to receive them.  In the
standard case you want to record the article filename and Message-ID in a
batchfile for the site:
    myfeed/myfeed.dom.main:*,!foo.*\
	Tf,Wnm:
You now want to run send-nntp or nntpsend from cron so that the file is
flushed and that innxmit is called to read the file and send the articles
out.  See the manual pages.


------------------------------

Subject:  How come my host name comes out twice in the Path line?

The INN server puts its name in the Path line of every article that it
receives.  Obviously, it has to do this.  The default configuration has
inews put the local host in the Path header.  If nobody posts on the
server and you use fully-qualified domain names on your workstations, then
everything works the right way.  (If `hostname` doesn't give an FQDN on
your machine, you can work-around this by setting the "domain" value in
inn.conf).  Many people don't want the client machines to put their name
in the Path header.  To do this, set INEWS_PATH to DONT.  Finally, let me
say that it is probably a mistake to have a "pathhost" line on any machine
other than your server if you set INEWS_PATH to DO.  If you doubt this,
please trace the article flow for yourself.  If you are curious about the
effect of INEWS_PATH, read the nroff source -- not the formatted output --
of doc/inews.1


------------------------------

Subject:  Expire had problems last night, and while I fixed the problem,
	  it still won't run.

When expire starts up it "reserves" the server so that nobody else can
pause or throttle it.  This prevents anyone else from coming in and
modifying the history database.  If expire bails out because of a bad
error (e.g., your expire.ctl has syntax errors) it leaves the server
reserved so that no maintenance will be done until a good expire run has
occurred.  To unblock the server, use the ctlinnd "reserve" command with
an empty string argument.


------------------------------

Subject:  Why does my innd often die with the message "Can't sync history,
	  interrupted system call"

Are you running SunOS?  If so, the answer is that Sun broke the write
system call but a patch is available.  Any write could fail in this way,
it is just more likely to happen when writing large files and in-core DBZ
writes the history file out in one chunk.  See the "Known Problems"
section of the installation manual.  To the best of my knowledge, nobody
has seen this problem on any other system.


------------------------------

Subject:  Why am I getting alt.sex.pictures even though I have
	  "ME:!alt.sex.pictures" in my newsfeeds file?

The active file is the definitive list of what newsgroups you receive.
INN's ME entry is different from C News and B News; please see
newsfeeds.5.  If you do not want to receive alt.sex.pictures, ask the
system(s) that send you news not to send it to you.  (You would have to do
that no matter what news system you are running.)


------------------------------

Subject:  Why doesn't this newsfeeds entry do what I want?
	  "foo.com:alt,!alt.sex"

A newsfeeds entry is not a sys file entry.  Please read newsfeeds.5.  You
might also find the sys2nf program in the frontends directory useful, as
well as the inncheck Perl script that is found in the samples directory.
The INN Configuration FAQ has cook-book examples of the steps required
to install a NNTP feed, UUCP feed, and NNTP via nntplink feed.


------------------------------

Subject:  Why am I forwarding cancel messages for articles in comp.foo
	  when I explicitly have !comp.foo in the newsfeeds entry?

Control messages can be explicitly forwarded, so a control message to
comp.foo is forwarded to sites that recieve either comp.foo or control.
Please see the "Control Messages" section of innd.8.  As that
documentation says, you probably want to put "!control" in the
subscription list for most of your newsfeeds.


------------------------------

Subject:  Help!?  How do I configure this beast

Tom Limoncelli wrote a very good tutorial document.  It is not part of
the INN release, but many FTP sites keep a copy in the same directory.
Look for a file named inn-tutorial.

-- 
Tom Limoncelli -- tal@warren.mentorg.com (work) -- tal@plts.uucp (play)

Unix is a trademark of, WHATT????
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp,news.software.b