INN glitch...

[Dave Laird]

Good morning, all...

I just stumbled onto something that would be hilarious, were it not for
the fact it clearly sets Debian off to one side all by itself when it
comes to serving as a Usenet News Server. It has all the paths of the
various log files, the variables that normally are handed off to the news
server in inn.conf, and various other functions that control the Usenet
News Server environment hard-coded.

Uf da! I guess the only sure-fire way to make things customizable beneath
Debian is to download and compile a copy of INN from source.

Your thoughts, James?

Dave

[James Vahn]

Post by Dave Laird
I just stumbled onto something that would be hilarious, were it not for
the fact it clearly sets Debian off to one side all by itself when it
comes to serving as a Usenet News Server. It has all the paths of the
various log files, the variables that normally are handed off to the news
server in inn.conf, and various other functions that control the Usenet
News Server environment hard-coded.

Logging is by way of syslog.conf, and innshellvars (.sh .csh .pl .tcl) is
supposed to be used in a script like this:

if [ -e /usr/lib/news/innshellvars ]; then
. /usr/lib/news/innshellvars
else

so it will populate your variables. But you're dabbling where I've never
dabbled. What are you dabbling with?


--

[Dave Laird]

Good morning, James!!

Post by James Vahn
Logging is by way of syslog.conf, and innshellvars (.sh .csh .pl .tcl) is
if [ -e /usr/lib/news/innshellvars ]; then
. /usr/lib/news/innshellvars
else
so it will populate your variables. But you're dabbling where I've never
dabbled. What are you dabbling with?

Setting the PATH's for where INN stores the spool. If you'll remember the
other day, I was somewhat addled by Debian INN's default spool location of
/var/spool/news, instead of the INN default of /var/spool/news/articles.
In the version compiled from source, those configuration settings are
handled at the bottom of the /etc/news/inn.conf file. In the Debian INN,
however, those are now relegated to the variables loaded at run-time and
any attempts to alter them in inn.conf are ignored soundly.

For example, if I wanted to set the news spool to where it appears in
/doodah/var/spool/news instead of /var/spool/news, the INN method is to
change the inn.conf file, ctlinnd reload, and you're off and running.
Debian's method is to alter the load-time variables and restart the
server. <shrug>

It's a small difference, but only one of many. A quick stroll through the
/usr/share/doc/inn directory will explain that *many* changes were made
over the last year, just getting INN to run stable and, hence, the
differences between the version(s) installed from source and those
included in the Debian packaging.

However, in Debian's defense, somebody *FINALLY* fixed the broken actived
which considerably speeds the news readers. I've seen instances where
there were 30-40 readers hanging in limbo, but the current Debian version
seems to have solved that bottleneck. Wheee!

Dave

[James Vahn]

Post by Dave Laird

Post by James Vahn
so it will populate your variables. But you're dabbling where I've never
dabbled. What are you dabbling with?

Setting the PATH's for where INN stores the spool. If you'll remember the
other day, I was somewhat addled by Debian INN's default spool location of
/var/spool/news, instead of the INN default of /var/spool/news/articles.

Uh-oh. sounds like you have inn rather than inn2 installed. The default
for inn2 is /var/spool/news/articles and is defined in inn.conf (below).

Post the output of this, please:

apt-cache policy inn inn2


/etc/news/inn.conf:
# Paths

patharchive: /var/spool/news/archive
patharticles: /var/spool/news/articles
pathbin: /usr/lib/news/bin
pathcontrol: /usr/lib/news/bin/control
pathdb: /var/lib/news
pathetc: /etc/news
pathfilter: /etc/news/filter
pathhttp: /var/log/news
pathincoming: /var/spool/news/incoming
pathlog: /var/log/news
pathoutgoing: /var/spool/news/outgoing
pathoverview: /var/spool/news/overview
pathrun: /var/run/news
pathspool: /var/spool/news
pathtmp: /var/spool/news/incoming/tmp


--

[Dave Laird]

Good evening, James...

Post by James Vahn

Post by Dave Laird

Post by James Vahn
so it will populate your variables. But you're dabbling where I've never
dabbled. What are you dabbling with?

Setting the PATH's for where INN stores the spool. If you'll remember the
other day, I was somewhat addled by Debian INN's default spool location
of /var/spool/news, instead of the INN default of
/var/spool/news/articles.

Uh-oh. sounds like you have inn rather than inn2 installed. The default
for inn2 is /var/spool/news/articles and is defined in inn.conf (below).
apt-cache policy inn inn2

Well, it wasn't in there before, BUT it is now.

However, I've decided I'm going to Linspire. <CHOKE> Much easier to
configure and just as easy as Windows, they tell me. <snickering>

Dave