Hi all,
I have set up an INNd server at
news.volatile.bz. Currently I'm
finalising my configuration and ensuring both that everything is
working well enough and that I understand the essentials for news
server administration. I've also set up a secondary server at home and
peered between the two, so I can play with peering without disturbing
anyone else.
I eventually want to peer (perhaps soon, so feel free to reply or
E-mail me if interested) but first I'd like to clear up some of my
concerns.
First of all: newsgroup population. I assume I'd just send a
checkgroups for hierarchies I'm interested in? The resources at
ftp.isc.org seem non-exhaustive, with much of it out of date, and while
I could seed at least the big-8 hierarchies with the contents I found
on there, I wonder if it's the best approach or if I shouldn't bother.
Also, should I direct further administration questions to n.a.misc or
is there a better discussion platform for stupid people like me? ;) I'd
also be interested in any Web-based resources or FAQ articles that
would clue me into things I missed. I have been reading INN manpages as
necessary and lurking enough to gain a basic understanding of what I'm
doing, but I'm sure I'll run into new exciting things as time passes.
I'm interested in archival as well as participation, too, so I would
like to know the best way to backfill news before the point where I've
actually peered with anyone. I've seen some archival efforts, and I may
hunt online further, but if someone has a decent solution off the top
of their head, then I'd be happy to listen. And while disk space isn't
a horrible concern, I still want to be mindful of how much space these
archives would take (big-8, alt.*, free.*, auxiliary hierarchies)
because it will be a while before I actually have a colocated setup
where I can just shove disks in a rack-mounted NAS and not have to
worry about it ever again.
Finally (for now), how would I get INNd/nnrpd to listen on port 563?
Currently I'm using stunnel for TLS, but since it acts as a reverse
proxy, it sends my machine's IP address to innd. IIRC I can configure
stunnel to send the source IP address, but that requires iptables or
LD_PRELOAD tricks and I'd rather have a cleaner solution than that.
As for my own server and organisation, you can find information about
what I do at <
https://volatile.bz/>. I'll soon publish information on
<
https://volatile.bz/news.xht> about NNTP itself once I am ready to
publicise the service.
Basically, I'm invested in decentralised free-software communication
platforms, and NNTP seems to fit the bill for the forum aspect. While
I'm of course interested in Usenet (else why would I be posting here?),
I mainly wanted to leverage the protocol itself for a discussion
platform, instead of opting for something such as mailing lists, which
I view to be a "hack" and in general more tedious to set up, more
error-prone, having to worry about bulk mailing policies and delivery
issues, et cetera.
Server specs:
- Location: Moldova (with provider MivoCloud)
- IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity
- Quad-core Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1225 V2 @ 3.20GHz
- 1TB HDD (shared with other applications/services, which is why I need
to be wary of disk usage for now)
- 20TB monthly bandwidth limit (I average much less with normal use)
- Gigabit up/down link
- 8GiB memory, most of it is free
I have port 119 open on
uta.volatile.bz (563 for TLS) and am currently
carrying a couple of newsgroups for testing or local use. I allow all
posting to certain hierarchies (free.*, volatile.*, possibly ano.* and
a few others as I peer with people I already know) and restrict to
read-only access on other groups for anonymous users. Eventually I'll
have it so that users registered to Volatile can participate with their
accounts on all hierarchies.
I am *not* interested in hosting an open-access server, and as such I
don't deem it necessary to instate restricted policies to users
registered to my service. Should issues arise from my server(s), I would
like to know about it and act upon it accordingly. In reality, risk of
abuse should be low, since Volatile registration is on an invitation or
donation basis. I also have terms listed at
<
https://volatile.bz/rules.xht> just to clarify what I act upon.
I'm also uninterested in carrying binary groups. My policy is to allow
attachments where they make sense, but I understand that a majority of
Usenet may not like this, so I advise my users to judge for themselves
whether attachments would be sensible in any given newsgroup or
conversation.
I've signed this message with my primary PGP key -- the one I'll be
using to send pretty much all my messages here from now on. You can
import it and view info at <
https://wowana.me/pgp.xht>.
Other than that, I'm looking forward to hearing back about my questions
and about any peering proposals. Thanks.