[Gllug] re: leafnode and user news

[itsbruce at uklinux.net]

On Fri, Jun 14, 2002 at 09:15:56AM +0100, john gennard 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.

> > 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.

> >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.

Ah, this is then a problem between knode and your isp and I know nothing
of knode.

> 
> 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.


-- 
Bruce

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