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net news on cosmic.voyage
April 26th, 2019
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Thanks to the hard work of pople like dbucklin, deepend and
vilmibm, we now have net news (read: USENET without the spam)
installed and working on cosmic.voyage AND it peers with
news.tildeverse.org and tilde.team! This is huge, folks.
To run it on cosmic, just type 'news'. I made a little wrapper
around slrn that handles creating a configuration file and
downloading group descriptions. You can also run it from 'menu'.
But that's not what I want to talk about on this phlog. Instead,
I'm going to _try_ to capture all the stuff I did to get it
working. INN2 is not exactly intuitive to set up.
First, the caveats:
- This install is on Ubuntu. Your milage may vary.
- Peering is working for NEW messages, but we don't have historics
syncing across systems yet. It probably has something to do with
control messages.
- Peering requires both parties to set this up. You can't just set
up your system to watch another. Each host must explicitly send
to another AND listen for incoming messages from other specific
hosts.
- You must have created the local groups on your system that you
want to receive messages. They're not created automatically.
Again, this is probably a function of control messages that we
haven't figured out yet.
Now, configuration:
- Install inn2. In Ubuntu it's just apt install inn2. On openbsd
you will need to use the --without-openssl switch or it will die
on make.
- Make sure that the 'news' user is created and all the folder
paths listed in inn2's INSTALL file exist. If doing this via apt
you should be good to go.
- Files for configuration are mostly in /etc/news/ with one
exception in /var/lib/news which we'll deal with at the end. If
you're not on Ubuntu/Debian, the paths may be different. See
INSTALL for a mapping by system.
- /etc/news/inn.conf # this is the main config
Changes:
organization: this is a site description in quotes
pathhost, domain, server: all should be your fqdn
- /etc/news/incoming.conf # where to listen for new incoming data
At the bottom, follow this convention:
peer ME {
hostname: "localhost, 127.0.0.1, ::1"
}
peer tildeverse {
hostname: "news.tildeverse.org"
}
peer team {
hostname: "tilde.team"
}
- /etc/news/innfeed.conf # where are we sending our data
Define peers here. ip-name is the only required field:
peer team {
ip-name: tilde.team
initial-connections: 2
max-connections: 5
}
peer tildeverse
{
ip-name: news.tildeverse.org
initial-connections: 2
max-connections: 5
}
- /etc/news/newsfeeds # defines what we send to whom
This is the most complex file and hardest to grok. Note the
!cosmic.* lines in the peers. That keeps cosmic's local groups
(which start with cosmic.) from sending to remotes. Change it up
for your own system.
innfeed!\
:!*\
:Tc,Wnm*\
:/usr/lib/news/bin/innfeed
tildeverse\
:*,!local,!local.*,!cosmic.*,!control,!control.*,!junk/!local\
:Af,Ap,C20,G12,U5,<32768,Tm\
:innfeed!
team\
:*,!local,!local.*,!cosmic.*,!control,!control.*,!junk/!local\
:Af,Ap,C20,G12,U5,<32768,Tm\
:innfeed!
- /etc/news/server # should be your fqdn
cosmic.voyage
- /etc/news/nntpsend.ctl # actually sends the data!
# host : fqdn : size limit : flags
tildeverse:news.tildeverse.org:2m:-t 180
team:tilde.team:2m:-t 180
- /etc/news/readers.conf # for local stuff
newsgroups filters hide the junk and control folders from your
local users. They don't need to see that junk.
auth "localhost" {
hosts: "localhost, 127.0.0.1, ::1, stdin"
default: "<localhost>"
}
access "localhost" {
users: "<localhost>"
newsgroups: "*,!junk,!control,!control.*"
access: RPA
}
- /var/lib/news/newsgroups # all groups, local and remote
tabs separate the group name and the description. The number of
tabs needed changes based on the length of the group name. If
you line things up nicely with tabs you probably counted right.
These names appear in the newsreader clients.
NOTE: before you add them to this file you need to actually create
the groups using: sudo ctlinnd newgroup <groupname>
control Various control messages (no posting)
control.cancel Cancel messages (no posting)
control.checkgroups Hierarchy check control messages (no posting)
control.newgroup Newsgroup creation control messages (no posting)
control.rmgroup Newsgroup removal control messages (no posting)
junk Unfiled articles (no posting)
local.general Local general group
local.test Local test group
cosmic.general General Discussion
cosmic.storyhelp Help with storylines and characters
cosmic.worldbuilding Expanding the universe
tilde.cosmic Tildeverse chat about cosmic.voyage
tilde.meta
tilde.services.uucp
tilde.ascii
tilde.food+drink
tilde.javascript
tilde.meetups
tilde.nsfw
tilde.php
tilde.python
tilde.poetry
tilde.projects
tilde.services
tilde.team
- OPEN PORT 119!!!!!
sudo ufw allow 119
- Restart innd
sudo ctlinnd xexec innd
I think that's it. Remember, your peer will need to set all this
up to point back at you or nothing will share.
If we figure out the control group stuff I'll make a follow-up
post.