tilde.club/docs/usenet.md

Usenet in 60 Seconds

Installation

Create Linux machine (This is based on Fedora 32)

$ sudo -i
root $ dnf update


root $ dnf install innd

root $ vim /etc/hostname # set your hostname to something like `news`
root $ vim /etc/hosts # change local.localdomain to the new hostname

# should probably restart the machine to get the new hostname

root $ sudo -u news bash
news $ vim /etc/inn.conf

The top of my inn.conf looks like:

    mta:                         "/usr/sbin/sendmail -oi -oem %s"
    organization:                "tilde.club"
    ovmethod:                    tradindexed
    hismethod:                   hisv6
    pathhost:                    news.tilde.club
    pathnews:                    /usr/local/news

    #runasuser:
    #runasgroup:

    # General Settings

    domain:                      news.tilde.club
    #innflags:
    mailcmd:                     /usr/libexec/news/innmail
    server:                      news.tilde.club
    #syntaxchecks:               [ no-laxmid ]

Then you need to configure readers.conf to say who can connect, how, and what kind of things they get when they log in.

news $ mv /etc/news/readers.conf /etc/news/readers.conf.old
news $ vim /etc/readers.conf

A rudimentary readers.conf looks like:

# Since tilde.club is very open and inviting, I don't mind having
# such a wild rule.

auth tilde.club {
        hosts: *
        default: <PUBLIC>
}

access default {
        users: <PUBLIC>
        newsgroups: "*,!admin.*,!control,!control.*,!mode,!junk"
}

access admin {
        users: "artem,ftrain@tilde.club"
        newsgroups: *
        access: "RPA"
        perlfilter: false
}

And finally set up the cron job to expire messages. Make sure you add this as the news user cron:

0 6 * * * /usr/libexec/news/news.daily > dev/null

Running the server

This can be accomplished via systemd.

Here is how to enable it to start automatically:

root $ systemctl enable innd

The following runs the server:

root $ systemctl start innd

And the following stops it:

root $ systemctl stop innd

All errors are logged to /var/log/news. /var/log/errlog is a good resource for finding out why your news server isn't running.

Troubleshooting the server

If you know there are articles on the server and for some reason they do not show when you connect with a client, you can rebuild your history and index's.

root $ systemctl stop innd

root $ sudo -u news bash
    
news $ cd /var/lib/news/

news $ time /usr/libexec/news/makehistory -b -O -f history.n

news $ awk 'NF == 2 { print }' < history >> history.n

news $ /usr/libexec/news/makedbz -s `wc -l < history` -f history.n

news $ mv  history.n history

news $ mv history.n.dir  history.dir

news $ mv history.n.hash history.hash

news $ mv history.n.index history.index

news $ exit

root $ systemctl innd start

root $ sudo -u news /usr/libexec/news/ctlinnd renumber ''
    
Above guide was copied/modified from: https://lists.isc.org/pipermail/inn-workers/2003-September/012007.html