1Welcome to INN 2.6!
2
3 This work is sponsored by Internet Systems Consortium.
4
5 Please see INSTALL for installation instructions, NEWS for what's
6 changed from the previous release, and LICENSE for the copyright,
7 license, and distribution terms.
8
9What is INN?
10
11 INN (InterNetNews), originally written by Rich Salz, is an extremely
12 flexible and configurable Usenet / Netnews news server. For a complete
13 description of the protocols behind Usenet and Netnews, see RFC 3977
14 (NNTP), RFC 4642 updated by RFC 8143 (TLS/NNTP), RFC 4643 (NNTP
15 authentication), RFC 4644 (streaming NNTP feeds), RFC 5536 (USEFOR),
16 RFC 5537 (USEPRO), RFC 6048 (NNTP LIST additions) and RFC 8054 (NNTP
17 compression) or their replacements.
18
19 In brief, Netnews is a set of protocols for exchanging messages between
20 a decentralized network of news servers. News articles are organized
21 into newsgroups, which are themselves organized into hierarchies. Each
22 individual news server stores locally all articles it has received for a
23 given newsgroup, making access to stored articles extremely fast.
24 Netnews does not require any central server; instead, each news server
25 passes along articles it receives to all of the news servers it peers
26 with, those servers pass the articles along to their peers, and so on,
27 resulting in "flood fill" propagation of news articles.
28
29 A news server performs three basic functions: it accepts articles from
30 other servers and stores them on disk, sends articles it has received
31 out to other servers, and offers stored news articles to readers on
32 demand. It additionally has to perform some periodic maintenance tasks,
33 such as deleting older articles to make room for new ones.
34
35 Originally, a news server would just store all of the news articles it
36 had received in a file system. Users could then read news by reading
37 the article files on disk (or more commonly using news reading software
38 that did this efficiently). These days, news servers are almost always
39 stand-alone systems and news reading is supported via network
40 connections. A user who wants to read a newsgroup opens that newsgroup
41 in their newsreader software, which opens a network connection to the
42 news server and sends requests for articles and related information.
43 The protocol that a newsreader uses to talk to a news server and that a
44 news server uses to talk to another news server over TCP/IP is called
45 NNTP (Network News Transport Protocol).
46
47 INN supports accepting articles via either NNTP connections or via UUCP.
48 innd, the heart of INN, handles NNTP feeding connections directly; UUCP
49 newsfeeds use rnews (included in INN) to hand articles off to innd.
50 Other parts of INN handle feeding articles out to other news servers,
51 most commonly innfeed (for real-time outgoing feeds) or nntpsend and
52 innxmit (used to send batches of news created by innd to a remote site
53 via TCP/IP). INN can also handle outgoing UUCP feeds.
54
55 The part of INN that handles connections from newsreaders is nnrpd.
56
57 Also included in INN are a wide variety of supporting programs to handle
58 periodic maintenance and recovery from crashes, process special control
59 messages, maintain the list of active newsgroups, and generate and
60 record a staggering variety of statistics and summary information on the
61 usage and performance of the server.
62
63 INN also supports an extremely powerful filtering system that allows the
64 server administrator to reject unwanted articles (such as spam and other
65 abuses of Usenet).
66
67 INN is free software, supported by Internet Systems Consortium and
68 volunteers around the world. See "Supporting the INN Effort" below.
69
70Prerequisites
71
72 Compiling INN requires an ANSI C compiler (gcc is recommended). INN was
73 originally written in K&R C, but supporting pre-ANSI compilers has
74 become enough of a headache that a lot of the newer parts of INN will no
75 longer compile with a non-ANSI compiler. gcc itself will compile with
76 most vendor non-ANSI compilers, however, so if you're stuck with one,
77 installing gcc is highly recommended. Not only will it let you build
78 INN, it will make installing lots of other software much easier. You
79 may also need GNU make (particularly if your system make is
80 BSD-derived), although most SysV make programs should work fine.
81 Compiling INN also currently requires a yacc implementation (bison will
82 do fine).
83
84 INN uses GNU autoconf to probe the capabilities of your system, and
85 therefore should compile on nearly any Unix system. It does, however,
86 make extensive use of mmap(), which can cause problems on some older
87 operating systems. See INSTALL for a list of systems it is known to
88 work on. If you encounter problems compiling or running INN, or if you
89 successfully run INN on a platform that isn't listed in INSTALL, please
90 let us know (see "Reporting Bugs" below).
91
92 Perl 5.004_03 or later is required to build INN and use the embedded
93 Perl filter support (which is highly recommended; some excellent spam
94 filters have been written for INN). Since all versions of Perl previous
95 to 5.004 are buggy (including security problems) and have fewer
96 features, installing Perl 5.004_03 or later (like at least Perl 5.8.0)
97 is recommended.
98
99 If you want to enable PGP verification of control messages (highly
100 recommended), you will need to have a PGP implementation installed. See
101 INSTALL for more details.
102
103Getting Started
104
105 A news server can be a fairly complicated piece of software to set up
106 just because of the wide variety of pieces that have to be configured
107 (who is authorized to read from the server, what newsgroups it carries,
108 and how the articles are stored on disk at a bare minimum, and if the
109 server isn't completely stand-alone -- and very few servers are -- both
110 incoming and outgoing feeds have to be set up and tested). Be prepared
111 to take some time to understand what's going on and how all the pieces
112 fit together. If you have any specific suggestions for documentation,
113 or comments about things that are unclear, please send them to the INN
114 maintainers (see "Reporting Bugs" below).
115
116 See INSTALL for step-by-step instructions for setting up and configuring
117 a news server.
118
119 INN also comes with a very complete set of man pages; there is a man
120 page for every configuration file and program that comes with INN. (If
121 you find one that doesn't have a man page, that's a bug. Please do
122 report it.) When trying to figure out some specific problem, reading
123 the man pages for all of the configuration files involved is a very good
124 start.
125
126Reporting Bugs
127
128 We're interested in all bug reports. Not just on the programs, but on
129 the documentation too. Please send *all* such reports to
130
131 inn-workers@lists.isc.org
132
133 (patches are certainly welcome, see below). Even if you post to Usenet,
134 please CC the above address.
135
136 If you have general "how do I do this" questions or problems configuring
137 your server that you don't believe are due to a bug in INN, you should
138 post them to news.software.nntp. A lot of experienced INN users,
139 including several of the INN maintainers, read that newsgroup regularly.
140 Please don't send general questions to the above addresses; those
141 addresses are specifically for INN, and the INN maintainers usually
142 won't have time to answer general questions.
143
144Contributing Code
145
146 If you have a patch or a utility that you'd like to be considered for
147 inclusion into INN, please mail it to
148
149 inn-workers@lists.isc.org
150
151 in the body of the message (not as an attachment because the
152 mailing-list might strip it), or put it on a webpage and send a link.
153 Patches included with a bug report as described above should follow the
154 same procedure.
155
156 Have fun!
157
158Mailing Lists
159
160 There are various INN-related mailing lists you can join or send
161 messages to if you like. Some of them you must be a member of before
162 you can send mail to them (thank the spammers for that policy), and one
163 of them is read-only (no postings allowed).
164
165 inn-announce@lists.isc.org
166 Where announcements about INN are set (only
167 maintainers may post).
168
169 inn-workers@lists.isc.org
170 Discussion of INN development. It is also where
171 to send bug reports and patches for
172 consideration for inclusion into INN (postings
173 by members only). If you're an INN expert and
174 have the time to help out other users, we
175 encourage you to join this mailing list to
176 answer questions. (You may also want to read
177 the newsgroup news.software.nntp, which gets a
178 lot of INN-related questions.)
179
180 inn-committers@lists.isc.org
181 Subversion commit messages for INN are sent to
182 this list (only the automated messages are sent
183 here, no regular posting).
184
185 inn-bugs@lists.isc.org Trac tickets for INN are sent to this list (only
186 the automated messages are sent here, no regular
187 posting). Bug reports should be sent to the
188 inn-workers mailing list.
189
190 To join these lists, send a subscription request to the "-request"
191 address. The addresses for the above lists are:
192
193 inn-announce-request@lists.isc.org
194 inn-workers-request@lists.isc.org
195 inn-committers-request@lists.isc.org
196 inn-bugs-request@lists.isc.org
197
198Who's Responsible / Who to Thank
199
200 See CONTRIBUTORS for a long list of past contributors as well as people
201 from the inn-workers mailing list who have dedicated a lot of time and
202 effort to getting this new version together. They deserve a big round
203 of applause. They've certainly got our thanks.
204
205 This product includes software developed by UUNET Technologies, Inc. and
206 by the University of California, Berkeley and its contributors.
207
208 Last, but certainly not least, Rich Salz, the original author of INN
209 deserves a lion's share of the credit for writing INN in the first place
210 and making it the most popular news server software on the planet (no
211 NNTP yet to the moon, but we plan to be there first).
212
213Related Packages
214
215 INN users may also be interested in the following software packages that
216 work with INN or are based on it. Please note that none of this
217 software is developed or maintained by ISC; we don't support it and
218 generally can't answer questions about it.
219
220 Cleanfeed
221 URL: <https://www.mixmin.net/cleanfeed/> (maintained by Steve
222 Crook)
223
224 Cleanfeed is an extremely powerful spam filter, probably the most
225 widely used spam filter on Usenet currently. It catches excessive
226 multiposting and a host of other things, and is highly configurable.
227 Note that it requires that INN be built with Perl support (the
228 --with-perl option to configure).
229
230 Cleanfeed was originally developed by Jeremy Nixon who maintained it
231 until 1998. Then Marco d'Itri until 2002. Steve Crook has been
232 maintaining it since 2007.
233
234 A Python-based variant of Cleanfeed, named PyClean, also exists and
235 can be found at <https://github.com/crooks/PyClean>.
236
237 GUP (Group Update Program)
238 URL: <https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gup>
239
240 GUP provides a way for your peers to update their newsfeeds entries
241 as they want without having to ask you to edit the configuration
242 file all the time. It's useful when feeding peers take limited and
243 very specific feeds that change periodically.
244
245 innduct
246 URL:
247 <https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/ucgi/~ian/git-manpage/innduct.gi
248 t/innduct.8> (maintained by Ian Jackson)
249
250 A possible replacement for innfeed, innxmit and nntpsend that
251 quickly and reliably streams Usenet article to a remote site.
252 innduct is designed to be robust and not to lose any articles (when
253 offered to peers) in case it unexpectedly dies, contrary to innfeed.
254 It also permits a realtime feed, contrary to innxmit or nntpsend.
255
256 NewsPortal
257 URL: <https://amrhein.eu/newsportal/doc/>
258
259 A PHP-based web news reader that works as a front-end to a regular
260 news server such as INN and lets people read and post without
261 learning a news reader.
262
263 PersonalINN
264 URL: <http://www.ritual.org/summer/pinn/>
265
266 PersonalINN is a version of INN modified for personal use and with a
267 friendly GUI built on top of it. It is available for NEXTSTEP or
268 OPENSTEP only, unfortunately.
269
270 suck
271 URL: <https://github.com/lazarus-pkgs/suck>
272
273 suck is a separate package for downloading a news feed via a reading
274 connection (rather than via a direct NNTP or UUCP feed) and sending
275 outgoing local posts via POST. It's intended primarily for personal
276 or small-organization news servers who get their news via an ISP and
277 are too small to warrant setting up a regular news feed.
278
279Supporting the INN Effort
280
281 Note that INN is supported by Internet Systems Consortium, and although
282 it is free for use and redistribution and incorporation into vendor
283 products and export and anything else you can think of, it costs money
284 to produce. That money comes from ISPs, hardware and software vendors,
285 companies who make extensive use of the software, and generally
286 kind-hearted folk such as yourself.
287
288 Internet Systems Consortium has also commissioned a DHCP server
289 implementation and handles the official support/release of BIND. You
290 can learn more about the ISC's goals and accomplishments from the web
291 page at <https://www.isc.org/>.
292
293 Russ Allbery
294 Katsuhiro Kondou
295 <inn@isc.org>
296
297 $Id: readme.pod 10359 2020-03-08 21:47:11Z eagle $
298
299