news servers and Linux
Tim
would be kind of cool (well, actually, it would be kind of geeky) to
have a Local Area Newgroup, with my Linux box as a newserver. Are there
freeware news servers like webservers? I really have no idea what a
newsserver does, or how a message posted to alt.os.linx gets there, so
any general information would be nice.
Thanks.
Erik de Castro Lopo
>
> Does anyone have the time to tell me what a newsserver is/does? It
> would be kind of cool (well, actually, it would be kind of geeky) to
> have a Local Area Newgroup, with my Linux box as a newserver. Are there
> freeware news servers like webservers?
Yep INN (http://www.isc.org/inn.html) is one. There are a number of
others. Nearly all are Open Source (tm).
To find out how news works have a look around:
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/docproject/zen/zen-1.0_toc.html
Erik
--
+-------------------------------------------------+
Erik de Castro Lopo er...@zip.com.au
+-------------------------------------------------+
"... the industrial-capitalist mode of software production
was doomed to be outcompeted from the moment capitalism
began to create enough of a wealth surplus for many
programmers to live in a post-scarcity gift culture."
-- Eric S. Raymond
(http://www.earthspace.net/~esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading.html)
Martin Domig
>
> Does anyone have the time to tell me what a newsserver is/does? It
> would be kind of cool (well, actually, it would be kind of geeky) to
> have a Local Area Newgroup, with my Linux box as a newserver. Are there
> newsserver does, or how a message posted to alt.os.linx gets there, so
> any general information would be nice.
> Thanks.
There are mainly two newsservers for linux you can get: C-News and INN. I am
preferring (and using) INN as newsserver. If you don't already have it go and
suck it from the internet. Take a look at www.linuxapps.com, there you will find
it. And yes, they are freeware. You can even get the source code if you want to.
A newsserver is a service that stores and provides news. (:-() It communicates
with other newsservers via internet and sends any new news that the other
doesn't already have. That server again sends your post to other servers... just
take a look at the headers of your post above, there is a line called Path.
Yours is:
> Path: martin.domig.linux.at!ubnnews.unisource.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!bofh.vszbr.cz!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!island.idirect.com!News.Toronto.iSTAR.net!news.istar.net!newsfeed.interlog.com!news.interlog.com!not-for-mail
You seem to have it posted at news.interlog.com which sent it to news.istar.net
which sent it to news.toronto.istar.net which sent it to... until it reached
news.unisource.ch where my INN got it from. martin.domig.linux.at is how I
called my machine, my newsserver adds the name of my machine to the path. This
way every newsserver knows which server already has this particular article and
doesn't send it back again. You see... your article took a long way to reach my
screen. That is - basically - how newsservers work.
How to setup one is another question, and it's not that what I'd call easy. But
it is possible. I did it, you can too. Local newsservers work fine. You could,
for example, add some local newsgroups to the others without the newsserver
sending them to the internet. If you have an intranet you can have a local
news-service. If your computer is connected to the internet you can have both:
local and international newsgroups. Your clients can post any articles on
international newsgroups and your computer sends them there. And articles which
are posted to local newsgroups aren't sent to the internet, because they are
local...
It's not that difficult to understand, is it?