[Gllug] leafnode and user news

[john gennard]

>
> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 10:46:24 +0100
> To: gllug at linux.co.uk
> Subject: Re: [Gllug] re: leafnode and user news
> From: itsbruce at uklinux.net
> Reply-To: gllug at linux.co.uk
>
> On Fri, Jun 14, 2002 Bruce wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Port 119 is also the default port for news, so any newsreader you 
> point at localhost will attempt to connect to port 119 unless you 
> specify some other port.
> As for who can connect, restrictions are by host, not user.  Check
> /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny to see if there is an entry in
> either for leafnode (and also look at the hosts_access and 
> hosts_options manpages).  Debian typically blocks all access to 
> leafnode in hosts.deny and allows localhost in hosts.allow.  In my 
> experience this causes problems for a networked computer, which 
> can be fixed either by removing all hosts.* entries for leafnode 
> or adding the computers hostname to the hosts.allow entry for 
> leafnode.
>
Now something has happened here. Admittedly I don't yet understand
much of this area.
/etc/hosts contains     "127.0.01 Arley localhost"
/etc/hosts.allow 	       "leafnode: 127.0.0.1"
/etc/hosts.deny          "ALL PARANOID" which I did not insert!
		        "leafnode: ALL"    I put 'leafnode: ALL EXCEPT LOCAL'
					(which I got from the install notes)

Initially, I said this box was a single user dial up one. Actually, 
I have one disk with Debian and one with SuSE and a hub connects me 
to a neighbours machine - he has an ADSL connection which he allows
me to use for large downloads ( kernel tarballs for example ). But I 
only connect from SuSE - there is no network configuration through
Debian. In fact I cannot get mail from this link as my ISP is 
unaware of its existence. So I assumed this could have no effect on
my problem with leafnode. Now, I wonder.
 
> > > 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.
>
> You run fetchnews, not leafnode, and you have to do it as root.  
> If I run fetchnews manually I always add -vvv as an option so I 
> can see what is going on.  This is helpful because there are times 
> when leafnode may take longer than usual (fetching group 
> descriptions, say) and you otherwise have no indication whether it 
> has crashed or is simply working hard.
>
I have been using fetchnews with -v to -vvvv, but the output doesn't 
help me. Where commands are recognised I just get the following:-

	Arley:/home/john# /usr/sbin/fetchnews -vvf
	1.9.9: verbosity level is 2
	Trying to connect to news.clara.net ... connected.
	Getting all newsgroups from news.clara.net
	Reading all newsgroups failed.
	Read server info from /var/spool/news/leaf.node/news.clara.net

> [snip]

>
> >
> > 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!
>
> I use slrn with leafnode - I was using leafnode before I switched 
> to slrn.  On Debian, at least, slrn and slrnpull are separate 
> packages.
>

Thanks for trying to help. I'm well into my seventies and greatly 
enjoy trying to get some proficiency with computers and especially
running Debian ( still haven't managed to crash it! ), but I suffer 
greatly from the lack of very basic understanding and the inability 
to visualize things; data being stored, ports being opened, packets 
flying around and so forth. Having been a bit of a pedant, the 
language used is also often tiresome to me - took me sometime to
understand 'default' had the same meaning as what Book Clubs do
with the Editors Choice if you don't select something else.

My thanks,

john. 
> --
> Bruce
>


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