[Gllug] re: leafnode and user news

[john gennard]

> On Thu, Jun 13, 2002 bruce wrote:
> > Leafnode should be run as root or news ( which effectively means 
>> as news ), and here I come up against something I've never 
>> understood.
> > Documentation does not say what kind of user news should be.
> > I already have news UID 9, but don't see how I can use this.
> >
> > Would someone help me by giving information on the following:-
> >
> > a. How exactly do I create the user needed ( an actual 
> > commandline example would be appreciated )
> > b. How do I get access to that user.
>
>
> You don't access the user.  The existing news user is the right 
> one.
> Leafnode is run by the inetd (or xinetd) daemon, which itself runs 
> as root.  Root has the ability to become any other user without 
> requiring a password (handy, since the news accout has no valid 
> password).  If the entry for a specific service specifies a user, 
> inetd launches it as that user.
>
> You never run leafnode yourself.  You configure inetd or xinetd
> (whichever is installed) to run leafnode whenever someone connects 
> to port 119.
>
>
Thank you, that certainly helps with understanding, but can 'someone'
be say user 'bill' or 'fred' and how would he connect to port 119.
Port 119 is the default for leafnode, so I have not needed to put an
optional parameter in leafnode's config file.

> > c. Leafnode is effectively three programs - leafnode, fetchnews 
> > and texpire. Would the first acton be to run 'leafnode LIST' or 
> > do I use 'fetchnews'.
>
>
> Having properly configured leafnode, you should run fetchnews so 
> it can download the list of groups available on the remote news 
> server(s).
>
Ah, how do I do this (? run /usr/sbin/leafnode) and can I do it from 
a nornal user account.
>
> Then you simply schedule fetchnews to run at regular intervals.  If
> someone tries to look at a particular newsgroup, leafnode creates 
> it locally and puts a single placeholder message in it.  Fetching 
> that post adds that group to the list of groups that fetchnews 
> should collect.  So if they check back in a while, the scheduled 
> fetchnews should have collected all the posts on the remote server 
> for that group.
>
That seems clear.
>
> > Trying to get to grips with this problem, I installed knode so 
> > that I could see what configuration it did. I could not get get 
> > the group descriptions to even start. After downloading 3.36Mb, 
> > the program cut out with an error message '501 - bad command 
> > usage' -this it did on each of three attempts. As I had followed 
> > the GUI requirements I did not understand this.
>
>
> Did you configure knode to read from the local box running 
> leafnode or from your isp's news server?  Maybe understanding the 
> sequence described above will help you make it work this time.
>
>From my isp's news server. At present I'm not too concerned with
this, though I will come back to it just to try to understand what 
the problem was.

I've now found there is a program slrn which fetches as well as reads
and which I seem to understand better. I may end up using this if it 
performs better from my point of view, but leafnode first!


>
> > As asides does anyone know if a GUI for leafnode has yet been
> > written and is there any preferred reader for use with leafnode.
>
>
> There is a web-based admin package for leafnode called leafwa.  
> However, it requires a webserver and php to be installed and 
> properly configured, so this may not be much help to you.
>
> http://www.comuno.freeserve.co.uk/oss/leafwa/intro.html

I'll keep a note of this for the future. It's certainly not for me 
at present.

Many thanks for your response.

John.

>
> --
> Bruce
>

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