Subject: INN FAQ Part 1/9: General Information
From: [email-masked] (Heiko W.Rupp)
Date: 15 May 1996 11:07:46 +0200
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp,news.software.b,news.answers

Posted-By: post_faq 2.10
Archive-name: usenet/software/inn-faq/part1
Last Changed: $Date: 1996/04/25 09:13:11 $ $Revision: 2.10 $

                  Part 1 of 9

INN FAQ Part 1: General and questions from people that don't (yet) run INN
INN FAQ Part 2: Specific notes for specific operating systems
INN FAQ Part 3: Reasons why INN isn't starting
INN FAQ Part 4: The debugging tutorial (setup of feeds etc.)
INN FAQ Part 5: Other error messages and what they mean
INN FAQ Part 6: Day-to-day operation and changes to the system
INN FAQ Part 7: Problems with INN already running
INN FAQ Part 8: Appendix A: Norman's install guide
INN FAQ Part 9: Appendix B: Configurations for certain systems

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

Subject:  Table Of Contents for Part 1/9

=====================================================================
        TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR PART 1/9
=====================================================================

QUESTIONS FROM PEOPLE THAT DON'T (YET) RUN INN:
	What is INN?
	I thought Rich Salz maintains INN ...
	What's the future of unoff releases?
	Where can I get the INN software?
	Where can I get the latest copy of this FAQ?
	Where may I find additional information?
	What machines does it run on?
	INN must be really complicated since this FAQ is so long!
	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?
	Does INN implement NOV, xthread (trn) or xuser/xmotd (tin) commands?
	Is an ident or authorization protocol supported?
	Does INN do UUCP batching like C News?
	Help!  How do I configure this beast?
	How do I thank the FAQ maintainer?

The FAQ was written by Rich $alz <[email-masked]>, was maintained 
for a long time by Tom Limoncelli <[email-masked]> and is now
maintained by Heiko W.Rupp <[email-masked]>

These documents would not exist if it weren't for the people that have
submitted questions and (most importantly) answers.  THANK YOU ALL!

=====================================================================
           QUESTIONS FROM PEOPLE THAT DON'T (YET) RUN INN
=====================================================================

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

Subject:  What is INN?

For a complete answer, why not read the Usenix paper that introduced
INN to the world?  It's available as
ftp.uu.net:networking/news/nntp/inn/inn.usenix.ps.Z

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 you need to support a mixed environment you will have
to do some extra work; the installation manual gives some hints.

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

Subject: I thought Rich Salz maintains INN ...

Rich did for a very long time .. 

From an announcement (<[email-masked]>) :

| I am pleased to announce that the Internet Software Consortium
| (http://www.isc.org/isc) will be responsible for future official INN
| releases, starting with INN1.5.  I am sure they will be posting a notice
| about their plans here fairly soon.
| 
| The interest and support (both financial and emotional) they have given
| me over the past few years has been immeasurable.  It was this interest,
| as much as their ability to commit top-flight engineering talent, that
| makes me feel confident that I'm leaving "my baby" in good hands.
| 
| I will still be involved with INN development, although more in an archi-
| tectural and philosophical role (i.e., "do it this way") rather than
| programming (i.e., "here's the code").
| 
| If you've found INN useful, I'm glad.  (By my count several thousand people
| still owe me a postcard. :)  If you expect to find it useful in the future,
| please support the ISC and their efforts.  I know I will.
|         /rich $alz

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

Subject: What's the future of unoff releases?

Q: As Rich no longer does inn - what's the future on unoff releases?

Dave Barr wrote:

| As it stands now I have decided to stop releasing any more unoff versions
| unless someone can convince me otherwise.  I am redirecting my efforts
| towards helping 1.5 see the light.  The code base has drifted enough
| already -- releasing unoff5 while 1.5 is trying to integrate unoff4
| stuff would be counterproductive.
|
| To put it another way, consider the INN1.4unoff to be under a
| code freeze.  Only bug fixes (and even then only to unoff-specific
| code, like streaming) will be accepted.

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

Subject: Where can I get the INN software?

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 ftp.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

The latest version of INN is 1.4sec.  This is rev. 1.4 with a slight
modification of certain shell scripts to fix a security hole.  Do
not run 1.4 without the patch (see part 6/9 of this FAQ).

Patches for INN are at: ftp://ftp.math.psu.edu/pub/INN/patches
    and                                               /patches/OLD
Add-ons for INN are at: ftp://ftp.math.psu.edu/pub/INN/contrib
("Add-ons" include "Gup" and other interesting tools)

Dave Barr made a fourth unofficial release containing many patches. From the 
announcement:

There's lots of new features, bug fixes, and one security fix in this
release over the previous "unoff3" release.  

You can get the release from:

ftp://ftp.math.psu.edu:/pub/INN/inn1.4unoff4.tar.gz

or one of the following mirrors:
 
USA:
ftp://ftp.orst.edu/pub/mirrors/ftp.math.psu.edu/INN
ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/packages/news/transport/inn_unoff/
ftp://ftp.fibr.net/pub/software/UNIX/INN
In Europe:
ftp://ftp.oleane.net/pub/mirrors/unix/inn-unoff/    (France)
ftp://ftp.univ-lyon1.fr/pub/mirrors/unix/inn-unoff/ (France)
ftp://ftp.belnet.be:/packages/INN                   (Belgium)
ftp://ftp.xlink.net/pub/news/server/                (Germany)
South Africa (GMT+2):
ftp://ftp.is.co.za/networking/news/inn/
Japan:
ftp://ftp.nisiq.net/news/inn
Taiwan:
ftp://NCTUCCCA.edu.tw/packages/news/inn-unoff

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

Subject:  Where can I get the latest copy of this FAQ?

0.  If you are reading this document, then you already have part 1 of it.
	So look around where you found this if the other parts are also there.

1.  This nine-part FAQ is available via FTP at any FTP site that carries
    INN itself.

2.  This FAQ is also posted to news.software.nntp, news.software.b and
	news.answers about every 10 days.

3.  A htmlized version can be found under 
	<http://www.unibe.ch/~guggis/faqs/inn> or
    <http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/inn-faq/top.html> or
    <http://www.smartpages.com/faqs/usenet/software/inn-faq/>

	These are grabbed from news.answers - so they might be a bit out
	of date :-(

4. If you don't find it in one of the above places, then try
   ftp://ftp.xlink.net/pub/news/docs/
   (on this server I put the newest FAQ after posting it).

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

Subject: Where may I find additional information?

The Usenix paper from Rich $alz:
	ftp.uu.net:networking/news/nntp/inn/inn.usenix.ps.Z

The Web site of the new maintainers, the Internet Software Consortium
    http://www.isc.org/isc

A good overview for those not familiar with news (from Tom Podnar 
<[email-masked]>):
	ftp://bones.wcupa.edu/pub/nntp.ps 

RFC's important to News:
	RFC 977: NNTP (Phil Lapsley and Brian Kantor)
	RFC 1036: Standard for Interchange of USENET Messages 
		(M.Horton, Rick Adams)

The O'Reilly Book (only for C News ; new version is in work)
	Managing UUCP and Usenet (Tim O'Reilly and Grace Todino)

The newsgroup news.software.nntp; please look around in this group. Often
	you'll find there the answer to the question you were going to ask. 
	But don't hesitate to ask.
	If you can't post to news.software.nntp you can send mail to
	[email-masked] which will post the your mail in that group.

Dave Barr has put togheter some informations about his unoff releases. 
	This page is also a entry for the patch archive:
	<http://www.math.psu.edu/barr/INN.html>

The overview database with its XOVER nntp extension is described in 
	ftp://ftp.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-barber-nntp-imp-01.txt
This is superseeded by 
    draft-barber-nntp-imp-02.txt  on the same site.
and will be superseeded by version 3 soon, which you also might get from
    ftp://ftp.academ.com/pub/nntp/private/nntp.extensions.draft.txt

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

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
(SunOS and Ultrix, for example), INN runs on IBM's AIX, Apple's A/UX,
NeXT, Solaris 2.x, most SVR4 platforms, BSDI, most free BSD systems 
(NetBSD, FreeBSD, ...) and a host of others.  It might require a
little bit of tweaking of some free BSD platforms that have really bad
shells.

INN has not been ported to Windows NT.  There are no plans to do so.
However, someone has written a package called NNS (Usenet Network News
Server) which is a NNTP-compliant news server for Windows NT.  For
information write to [email-masked].

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

Subject:  INN must be really complicated since this FAQ is so long!

No, it's just that the FAQ is very complete.  
Maybe someone should volunteer to maintain an index.

A lot of the material could be integrated into the Install.ms doc.

Please post questions to news.software.nntp.  Do not send
email to Heiko W.Rupp directly.  By posting your question,
a group of 10 or so people will be trying to help you.

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

Subject:  Can I run C News with INN?

No.  INN handles all article reception, filing, forwarding, and
expiration.  You will 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 that handles
just the NNTP commands that newsreaders use.  By default, this is nnrpd
(notice the "r"), 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:  Does INN implement NOV, xthread (trn) or xuser/xmotd (tin) commands?

Newsreaders all need some way to quickly grab data from
a range of articles.  trn, tin, nn, and others each developed
their own database format, and their own extensions to the NNTP
protocol for clients to read the database.  Then, Geoff Collyer
invented NOV, the database to end all other databases.

Rather than support a different database format for each newsreader,
INN supports Geoff Collyer's news overview database, NOV.  INN includes
everything you need to create/maintain/expire NOV's .overview files.
You only need Geoff's distribution (available via FTP on world.std.com
src/news/nov.dist.tar.Z) if you want to see how he implements things,
or to get his client library (useful when building some newsreaders).

It is very easy to configure INN to use NOV.  Read Part 4/9 of
this faq: Subject: Cookbook example of setting up NOV ("overchan")
NB: The NOV code in INN 1.3 is buggy.  Use 1.4 or higher.

The xover command is used for querying the NOV database.  The xover
command is very smart in that if the article has been canceled, the
data isn't given out.  If the article is so new that it's data isn't in
the NOV database, nnrpd opens the article and digs out the data.  xhrd
and xpat make every effort to use NOV data before they dig the data out
of the actual articles, thus making them considerably faster than other
implementations.  The "xoverview" command does not exist.  If your
server supports this command you need to upgrade.

What about TRN's xthread command?

The xthread command has code but it is not supported; look at
$inn/nnrpd/nnrpd.h.  This code will probably vanish after 1.4.

What about TIN's many commands?

Tin commands are not supported.  However, other people have
added TIN support.  See the next section.

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

Subject:  Is an ident or authorization protocol supported?

An unsupported patch for nnrpd to add ident support can be found via
FTP at ftp.csie.nctu.edu.tw:/pub/news/nnrpd-identd-patch.shar.gz.  It
includes patches to add tin's xuser and xmotd commands as well as a
list subscription system. ([email-masked])

Remember: ident information is only as valid as the server you connect
to.  Any fool with root access (or anyone with a PC or Mac) can create
a bogus ident server that will give out whatever information they want
you to see.  It's not an authorization or identification protocol, it's
just informational.

The authd protocol is added to nnrpd by <[email-masked]>.
This unsupported patch can be found in
ftp.eos.hokudai.ac.jp:/pub/network/news/inn/patches/authd-patch-1.3.tar.gz
The documentation is in Japanese.  Good luck.

In a future release, you will be able to log all POST commands with
ident information if you so choose.  (Maybe INN 1.5)

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

Subject:  Does INN do UUCP batching like C News?

Not as part of the standard distribution.  The batching system right
now is better than B News, but Rich has said he will be working on
improving that part of INN in a future release.  Christophe Wolfhugel
<[email-masked]> has written a package that is
very much like the C News batching system, however.  You can find it on
ftp.univ-lyon1.fr in the pub/unix/news/inn/contrib directory.

Version 3 of Christophe's package includes a shell version and a Perl
version.  Version 4, not yet planned will only be in Perl.  The
configuration file has evolved from older releases in order to support
new features like "minimum batching".

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

Subject:  Help!  How do I configure this beast?

READ AND FOLLOW THE "Install.ms" FILE.  This FAQ is meant to add to
what Install.ms says not replace it.

Many people that thought the Install.ms doc was incomplete later
re-read the "First Time Installation" portion and were amazed how much
they missed (or just plain skipped) the first time.

You should also purchase the O'Reilly And Associates book on Managing
Usenet to give yourself a good grounding on how to run a site.

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

Subject:  How do I thank the FAQ maintainer?

If you find this document useful, please consider making a donation to
the maintainer's favorite charity:

	The Personal Liberty Fund
	PO Box 11335
	New Brunswick, NJ 08906-1335
	USA

The PLF is a legal and educational organization which helps people in
New Jersey, USA.  They have many on-going projects which range from
combating youth suicide to legal advocacy.  Their Anti-Violence Project
runs a phone hotline for reporting gay-bashing which helps hundreds of
people a year.  The PLF is an all-volunteer organization and couldn't
survive without donations.  The PLF is recognized by the IRS as a
501(c)3 tax-exempt charity.  Donations are tax deductible to the
fullest extent of the law (U.S. citizens only).  Please write "INN" in
the memo field of the check.  Fifteen, fifty, or five hundred dollars...
every penny is appreciated!

-- 
Heiko W.Rupp [email-masked]
INN FAQ can be found in ftp://ftp.xlink.net/pub/news/docs/
                   Stoppt den Kinderwahnsinn !! -- Esst nur deutsche Kinder !!