From: INN FAQ Maintainers
INN FAQ Part 1: General and questions from people that don't (yet) run INN
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Subject: Table Of Contents for Part 1/9
QUESTIONS FROM PEOPLE THAT DON'T (YET) RUN INN:
The FAQ was written by Rich $alz <rsalz@rodan.uu.net>, was maintained
for a long time by Tom Limoncelli <tal@plts.org>, and then for an
equally long time by Heiko W.Rupp <hwr@pilhuhn.de>. It is now maintained
by the INN FAQ Maintainers Group: James Fidell, Dale Ghent, Nathan J.
These documents would not exist if it weren't for the people that have
submitted questions and (most importantly) answers. THANK YOU ALL!
Go to the table of contents
Subject: (1.1) What is INN?
For a complete answer, why not read the Usenix paper that introduced
INN to the world? It's available as
ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/news/nntp/inn/inn.usenix.ps.Z
InterNetNews is a complete Usenet system. The cornerstone of the package
is innd, an NNTP server that multiplexes all I/O. Think of it as an nntpd
merged with the B News inews, or as a C News relaynews that reads multiple
NNTP streams. Newsreading is handled by a separate server, nnrpd, that is
spawned for each client. Both innd and nnrpd have some slight variances
from the NNTP protocol (although in normal use you will never notice); see
the manpages. INN separates hosts that feed you news from those that have
users reading news. If you need to support a mixed environment you will have
to do some extra work; the installation manual gives some hints.
Go to the table of contents
Subject: (1.2) I thought Rich Salz maintains INN ...
Rich did for a very long time ..
From an announcement (<4k5pn3$ii9@paperboy.osf.org>) :
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.
For the postcards, Rich adds in (<565e4r$5v2@paperboy.osf.org>):
No no no. James gets the postcard. This means you have to track down
his current physical address; perhaps in-care-of the ISC would work. :)
The rules are actually pretty complicated:
Dave Barr added that the postcards for him also should be sent to the
ISC.
Go to the table of contents
Subject: (1.3) 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.
Go to the table of contents
Subject: (1.4) Where can I get the INN software?
The official archive site was 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 is INN 1.7.2 available from
!! Note that INN1.5.1 has a security vulnerability. You can find a
!! first patch to this at http://miquels.www.cistron.nl/inn/
Patches for older versions are available from:
Patches for INN are at: ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/inn/unoff-patches
Go to the table of contents
Subject: (1.5) 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.
1. This nine-part FAQ is available via FTP at any FTP site that carries
2. This FAQ is also posted to news.software.nntp, news.software.b and
3. If you don't find it in one of the above places, then try:
4. A htmlized version can be found under:
Go to the table of contents
Subject: (1.6) Where may I find additional information?
The Usenix paper from Rich $alz:
The Web site of the new maintainers, the Internet Software Consortium
A good overview for those not familiar with news (from Tom Podnar
<tpodnar@bones.wcupa.edu>):
A FAQ in french - maintained by Fabien Tassin <tassin@eerie.fr>
A Usenet/INN hypertext documentation effort by Forrest J. Cavalier III
<mibsoft@epix.net>
A FAQ in Japanese - maintained by Toshio Hori <toshi@etl.go.jp>
Jeff Garzik <jeff.garzik@spinne.com> started to write a ``INN tuning
RFC's important to News:
The O'Reilly Book (only for C News ; new version is in work)
The newsgroup news.software.nntp; please look around in this group. Often
Dave Barr has put together some information about his unoff releases.
The overview database with its XOVER nntp extension is described in
There is a book from Addison-Wesley called 'Administering Usenet News
Servers' by Jim McDermott and John Phillips (ISBN 0-201-41967-X)
which seems to cover INN and Dnews. This is not clear from the aw web
site though.
There is no special book on INN out at the moment, but it is said,
that Dave Lawrence and Henry Spencer are currently writing one for
O'Reilly.
Go to the table of contents
Subject: (1.7) 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.
Go to the table of contents
Subject: (1.8) INN must be really complicated since this FAQ is so long!
No, it's just that the FAQ is very complete.
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 the FAQ maintainers directly. By posting your question,
a group of 10 or so people will be trying to help you.
Go to the table of contents
Subject: (1.9) 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.)
Go to the table of contents
Subject: (1.10) 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?
Go to the table of contents
Subject: (1.11) 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).
Go to the table of contents
Subject: (1.12) 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.
Go to the table of contents
Subject: (1.13) 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.
Go to the table of contents
Subject: (1.14) 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.
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.
Go to the table of contents
Subject: (1.15) Is an ident or authorization protocol supported?
An unsupported patch for nnrpd to add ident support can be found via
FTP at ftp://ftp.csie.nctu.edu.tw/pub/News/packages/nnrpd-ident.tar.gz It
includes patches to add tin's xuser and xmotd commands as well as a
list subscription system. (skhuang@csie.nctu.edu.tw)
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 <nhiro@isci.kyutech.ac.jp>.
In a future release, you will be able to log all POST commands with
ident information if you so choose. (Maybe INN 1.5)
Go to the table of contents
Subject: (1.16) 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
<Christophe.Wolfhugel@grasp.insa-lyon.fr> has written a package that is
very much like the C News batching system, however. You can find it at
ftp://ftp.univ-lyon1.fr/pub/unix/news/inn/contrib/
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".
Go to the table of contents
Subject: (1.17) 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. Even if a already configured or
pre installed INN comes with your OS, you should at least glance at
Install.ms to see where is what and why.
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.
[Erratum 12 Dec 97: The O'Reilly book referenced here is currently
out of print. See section 1.6 for more information on books on INN.]
Go to the table of contents
Subject: (1.18) How do I thank the FAQ maintainers?
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...
Go to the table of contents
Subject: (1.19) What has Netscape's Newsserver to do with INN?
Netscape took INN as the original source base for their server and
added their own extensions. As revisions go by they will differ more.
netscape did not get any special consideration for INN. Anyone who
wants to commercialize it is free to do so.Read the COPYRIGHT file.
You can get answers to problems with the Netscape Server in
snews">news://secnews.netscape.com/netscape.server.news">snews://secnews.netscape.com/netscape.server.news
[Erratum 12 Dec 97: Netscape appears to have abandoned their INN-based
news server in favor of "Netscape Collabra", which is not based on
INN code.]
Go to the table of contents
Subject: (1.20) How do I submit additional information for the FAQ?
If you have an addition to the FAQ then send it to the FAQ
maintainers group at <innfaq-submit@blank.org>. Please try to bring your
submission in the style of the actual FAQ (Especially if you submit an
entry for part9 then please follow 9.1). If you put (along others)
'inn' in the subject, you will get an automatic acknowledge of
receipt.
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp,news.software.b
Subject: INN FAQ Part 1/9: General Information
Followup-To: news.software.nntp
Summary: This article is part 1 of a multi-part FAQ: Part 1: Common questions about INN itself, useful to people that do not currently run INN.
Posted-By: post_faq 2.10
Archive-name: usenet/software/inn-faq/part1
Last Changed: $Date: 1997/12/18 21:42:25 $ $Revision: 1.7 $
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
Mehl, Chris van den Berg and Stephen Zedalis. Submissions, comments
and corrections could to to <innfaq-submit@blank.org>.
| /rich $alz
| If you're installing 1.4sec2 or earlier, send yourself a postcard
| saying you should upgrade.
| If you're installing 1.5 or later, for the first time with INN,
| send James the postcard.
| If you're upgrading from 1.4 to 1.5, pro-rate your news volume
| and send us each the appropriate fraction. :)
ftp://ftp.vix.com/pub/inn/
or mirrors which are indicated on http://www.isc.org/inn.html
one mirror in Europe is
ftp://ftp.xlink.net/pub/mirror.inn/
and ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/inn/unoff-patches/OLD
Add-ons for INN are at: ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/inn/unoff-contrib
("Add-ons" include "Gup" and other interesting tools)
So look around where you found this if the other parts are also there.
INN itself.
news.answers about every other week.
ftp://ftp.blank.org/pub/innfaq/
Users in Europe may get better response from:
ftp://ftp.xlink.net/pub/news/docs/
http://www.blank.org/innfaq/
...which is generated from the same sources as the text version,
so it should always be up to date.
Dave Barr also maintains an HTML version at:
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/usenet/software/inn-faq/top.html
These are grabbed from news.answers - so they might be a bit out
of date :-(
ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/news/nntp/inn/inn.usenix.ps.Z
http://www.isc.org/inn.html
ftp://bones.wcupa.edu/pub/misc/nntp.ps
at http://www.eerie.fr/~news/faq.html
at http://www.mibsoftware.com/userkt/userkt.html
at ftp://etlport.etl.go.jp/pub/People/toshi/INN/J/
page'' which is oriented towards the Intel/Linux platform (but not
only of interest for Linux users) at
http://www.spinne.com/usenet/inn-perf.html
RFC 977: NNTP (Phil Lapsley and Brian Kantor)
RFC 1036: Standard for Interchange of USENET Messages
(M.Horton, Rick Adams)
Managing UUCP and Usenet (Tim O'Reilly and Grace Todino)
This book seems to be no longer in print, so O'Reilly probably
has no book about Usenet at the moment.
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
inn-questions@pilhuhn.de which will post the your mail in that group.
This page is also a entry for the patch archive:
<http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~barr/INN.html>
ftp://ftp.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-barber-nntp-imp-01.txt
This is superseded by
draft-barber-nntp-imp-02.txt on the same site.
and will be superseded by version 3 soon, which you also might get from
ftp://ftp.academ.com/pub/nntp/private/nntp.extensions.draft.txt
(This one is now at the 4th update)
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 nns@jeck.wa.com. (Note that NNS does not appear
to be actively maintained at the moment. Other NNTP servers for NT
include Microsoft Exchange, Netscape Collabra and DNEWS.)
On the other hand -- if you have a solution that should be included,
then send it to the maintainer, so that he can't miss it in the news.
See also 1.20 and 9.1.
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.
You only need Geoff's distribution (available via FTP on ftp.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).
This unsupported patch can be found in
ftp://ftp.eos.hokudai.ac.jp/pub/network/news/inn/patches/authd-patch-1.3.tar.gz
The documentation is in Japanese. Good luck.
every penny is appreciated!
Rich $alz adds:
Continue with Part 2...