1INN.CONF(5) InterNetNews Documentation INN.CONF(5)
2
6 inn.conf - Configuration data for InterNetNews programs
7
9 inn.conf in pathetc is the primary general configuration file for all
10 InterNetNews programs. Settings which control the general operation of
11 various programs, as well as the paths to all portions of the news
12 installation, are found here. The INNCONF environment variable, if
13 set, specifies an alternate path to inn.conf.
14 This file is intended to be fairly static. Any changes made to it will
16 generally not affect any running programs until they restart. Unlike
17 nearly every other configuration file, inn.conf cannot be reloaded
18 dynamically using ctlinnd(8); innd(8) must be stopped and restarted for
19 relevant changes to inn.conf to take effect ("ctlinnd xexec innd" is
20 the fastest way to do this.)
21 Blank lines and lines starting with a number sign ("#") are ignored.
23 All other lines specify parameters, and should be of the following
24 form:
25 <name>: <value>
27 (Any amount of whitespace can be put after the colon and is optional.)
29 If the value contains embedded whitespace or any of the characters
30 "[]<""\:>, it must be enclosed in double quotes (""). A backslash
31 ("\") can be used to escape quotes and backslashes inside double
32 quotes. <name> is case-sensitive; "server" is not the same as "Server"
33 or "SERVER". (inn.conf parameters are generally all in lowercase.)
34 If <name> occurs more than once in the file, the first value is used.
36 Some parameters specified in the file may be overridden by environment
37 variables. Most parameters have default values if not specified in
38 inn.conf; those defaults are noted in the description of each
39 parameter.
40 Many parameters take a boolean value. For all such parameters, the
42 value may be specified as "true", "yes", or "on" to turn it on and may
43 be any of "false", "no", or "off" to turn it off. The case of these
44 values is significant.
45 This documentation is extremely long and organized as a reference
47 manual rather than as a tutorial. If this is your first exposure to
48 INN and these parameters, it would be better to start by reading other
49 man pages and referring to this one only when an inn.conf parameter is
50 explicitly mentioned. Those parameters which need to be changed when
51 setting up a new server are discussed in INSTALL.
52
54 General Settings
55 These parameters are used by a wide variety of different components of
56 INN.
57 domain
59 This should be the domain name of the local host. It should not
60 have a leading period, and it should not be a full host address.
61 It is used only if the GetFQDN() routine in libinn(3) cannot get
62 the fully-qualified domain name by using either the gethostname(3)
63 or gethostbyname(3) calls. The check is very simple; if either
64 routine returns a name with a period in it, then it is assumed to
65 have the full domain name. As this parameter is rarely used, do
66 not use it to affect the righthand side of autogenerated Message-
67 IDs; see instead virtualhost and domain in readers.conf(5). The
68 default value is unset.
69 innflags
71 The flags to pass to innd on startup. See innd(8) for details on
72 the possible flags. The default value is unset.
73 mailcmd
75 The path to the program to be used for mailing reports and control
76 messages. The default is pathbin/innmail. This should not
77 normally need to be changed.
78 mta The command to use when mailing postings to moderators and for the
80 use of innmail(1). The message, with headers and an added To:
81 header, will be piped into this program. The string %s, if
82 present, will be replaced by the e-mail address of the moderator.
83 It's strongly recommended for this command to include %s on the
84 command line rather than use the addresses in the To: and Cc:
85 headers of the message, since the latter approach allows the news
86 server to be abused as a mechanism to send mail to arbitrary
87 addresses and will result in unexpected behavior. There is no
88 default value for this parameter; it must be set in inn.conf or a
89 fatal error message will be logged via syslog.
90 For most systems, "/usr/lib/sendmail -oi -oem %s" (adjusted for the
92 correct path to sendmail, and between double quotes) is a good
93 choice.
94 pathhost
96 What to put into the Path: header to represent the local site.
97 This is added to the Path: header of all articles that pass through
98 the system, including locally posted articles, and is also used
99 when processing some control messages and when naming the server in
100 status reports. There is no default value; this parameter must be
101 set in inn.conf or INN will not start. A good value to use is the
102 fully-qualified hostname of the system.
103 runasgroup
105 The group under which the news server will run. The default is
106 "news" and should not normally need to be changed.
107 runasuser
109 The user under which the news server will run. The default is
110 "news" and should not normally need to be changed.
111 server
113 The name of the default NNTP server. If nnrpdposthost is not set
114 and UNIX domain sockets are not supported, nnrpd(8) tries to hand
115 off locally-posted articles through an INET domain socket to this
116 server. actsync(8), nntpget(8), and getlist(8) also use this value
117 as the default server to connect to. In the latter cases, the
118 value of the NNTPSERVER environment variable, if it exists,
119 overrides this. The default value is unset.
120 Feed Configuration
122 These parameters govern incoming and outgoing feeds: what size of
123 articles are accepted, what filtering and verification is performed on
124 them, whether articles in groups not carried by the server are still
125 stored and propagated, and other similar settings.
126 artcutoff
128 Articles older than this number of days are dropped. The default
129 value is 10, which means that an incoming article will be rejected
130 if its posting date is farther in the past than ten days.
131 In order to disable that check on date, you can set this parameter
133 to 0.
134 The number on the "/remember/" line in expire.ctl should probably
136 be one more than that number in order to take into account articles
137 whose posting date is one day into the future.
138 bindaddress
140 Which IP address innd(8) should bind itself to. This must be in
141 dotted-quad format (nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn). If set to "all" or not set,
142 innd defaults to listening on all interfaces. The value of the
143 INND_BIND_ADDRESS environment variable, if set, overrides this
144 setting. The default value is unset.
145 bindaddress6
147 Like bindaddress but for IPv6 sockets. If only one of the
148 bindaddress and bindaddress6 parameters is used, then only the
149 socket for the corresponding address family is created. If both
150 parameters are used then two sockets are created. If neither of
151 them is used, the list of sockets to listen on will be determined
152 by the system library getaddrinfo(3) function. The value of the
153 INND_BIND_ADDRESS6, if set, overrides this setting. The default
154 value is unset.
155 Note that you will generally need to put double quotes ("") around
157 this value if you set it, since IPv6 addresses contain colons.
158 dontrejectfiltered
160 Normally innd(8) rejects incoming articles when directed to do so
161 by any enabled article filters (Perl or Python). However, this
162 parameter causes such articles not to be rejected; instead
163 filtering can be applied on outbound articles. If this parameter
164 is set, all articles will be accepted on the local machine, but
165 articles rejected by the filter will not be fed to any peers
166 specified in newsfeeds with the "Af" flag.
167 hiscachesize
169 If set to a value other than 0, a hash of recently received
170 Message-IDs is kept in memory to speed history lookups. The value
171 is the amount of memory to devote to the cache in kilobytes. The
172 cache is only used for incoming feeds and a small cache can hold
173 quite a few Message-IDs, so large values aren't necessarily useful
174 unless you have incoming feeds that are badly delayed. innreport
175 can provide useful statistics regarding the use of the history
176 cache, especially when it misses. A good value for a system with
177 more than one incoming feed is 256; systems with only one incoming
178 feed should probably set this to 0. The default value is 256.
179 ignorenewsgroups
181 Whether newsgroup creation control messages (newgroup and rmgroup)
182 should be fed as if they were posted to the newsgroup they are
183 creating or deleting rather than to the newsgroups listed in the
184 Newsgroups: header. If this parameter is set, the newsgroup
185 affected by the control message will be extracted from the Control:
186 header and the article will be fed as if its Newsgroups: header
187 contained solely that newsgroup. This is useful for routing
188 control messages to peers when they are posted to irrelevant
189 newsgroups that shouldn't be matched against the peer's desired
190 newsgroups in newsfeeds. This is a boolean value and the default
191 is false.
192 immediatecancel
194 When using the timecaf storage method, article cancels are normally
195 just cached to be cancelled, not cancelled immediately. If this is
196 set to true, they will instead by cancelled as soon as the cancel
197 is processed. This is a boolean value and the default is false.
198 This setting is ignored unless the timecaf storage method is used.
200 linecountfuzz
202 If set to something other than 0, the line count of the article is
203 checked against the Lines: header of the article (if present) and
204 the article is rejected if the values differ by more than this
205 amount. A reasonable setting is 5, which is the standard maximum
206 signature length plus one (some injection software calculates the
207 Lines: header before adding the signature). The default value is
208 0, which tells INN not to check the Lines: header of incoming
209 articles.
210 maxartsize
212 The maximum size of article (headers and body) that will be
213 accepted by the server, in bytes. A value of 0 allows any size of
214 article, but note that innd will crash if system memory is
215 exceeded. The default value is 1000000 (approximately 1 MB). This
216 is checked against the article in wire format (CRLF at the end of
217 each line, leading periods protected, and with the trailing
218 "\r\n.\r\n" at the end). See also localmaxartsize.
219 maxconnections
221 The maximum number of incoming NNTP connections innd(8) will
222 accept. The default value is 50.
223 pathalias
225 If set, this value is prepended to the Path: header of accepted
226 posts (before pathhost) if it doesn't already appear in the Path:
227 header. The main purpose of this parameter is to configure all
228 news servers within a particular organization to add a common
229 identity string to the Path: header. The default value is unset.
230 pathcluster
232 If set, this value is appended to the Path: header of accepted
233 posts (after pathhost) if it isn't already present as the last
234 element of the Path: header. The main purpose of this parameter is
235 to make several news servers appear as one server. The default
236 value is unset.
237 Note that the Path: header reads right to left, so appended means
239 inserted at the leftmost side of the Path: header.
240 pgpverify
242 Whether to enable PGP verification of control messages other than
243 cancel. This is a boolean value and the default is based on
244 whether configure found pgp, pgpv, or gpgv.
245 port
247 What TCP port innd(8) should listen on. The default value is 119,
248 the standard NNTP port.
249 refusecybercancels
251 Whether to refuse all articles whose message IDs start with
252 "<cancel.". This message ID convention is widely followed by spam
253 cancellers, so the vast majority of such articles will be cancels
254 of spam. This check, if enabled, is done before the history check
255 and the message ID is not written to the history file. This is a
256 boolean value and the default is false.
257 This is a somewhat messy, inefficient, and inexact way of refusing
259 spam cancels. A much better way is to ask all of your upstream
260 peers to not send to you any articles with "cyberspam" in the Path:
261 header (usually accomplished by having them mark "cyberspam" as an
262 alias for your machine in their feed configuration). The filtering
263 enabled by this parameter is hard-coded; general filtering of
264 message IDs can be done via the embedded filtering support.
265 remembertrash
267 By default, innd(8) records rejected articles in history so that,
268 if offered the same article again, it can be refused before it is
269 sent. If you wish to disable this behavior, set this to false.
270 This can cause a substantial increase in the amount of bandwidth
271 consumed by incoming news if you have several peers and reject a
272 lot of articles, so be careful with it. Even if this is set to
273 true, INN won't log some rejected articles to history if there's
274 reason to believe the article might be accepted if offered by a
275 different peer, so there is usually no reason to set this to false
276 (although doing so can decrease the size of the history file).
277 This is a boolean value and the default is true.
278 sourceaddress
280 Which local IP address to bind to for outgoing NNTP sockets (used
281 by innxmit(8) among other programs, as well as innfeed(8) as long
282 as not overridden by bindaddress in innfeed.conf(5)). This must be
283 in dotted-quad format (nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn). If set to "all", the
284 operating system will choose the source IP address for outgoing
285 connections. The default value is unset.
286 sourceaddress6
288 Like sourceaddress but for IPv6 sockets. Note that you will
289 generally need to put double quotes ("") around this value if you
290 set it, since IPv6 addresses contain colons.
291 verifycancels
293 Set this to true to enable a simplistic check on all cancel
294 messages, attempting to verify (by simple header comparison) that
295 at least one newsgroup in the cancel message can be found in the
296 article to be cancelled. This check can't be done if the cancel
297 arrives before the article does. This is a boolean value, and the
298 default is false.
299 Note that RFC 5537 (USEPRO) mentions that "cancel control messages
301 are not required to contain From: and Sender: header fields
302 matching the target message. This requirement only encouraged
303 cancel issuers to conceal their identity and provided no security".
304 This check is therefore not done as it is extremely easy to spoof.
305 verifygroups
307 Set this to true to reject incoming articles which contain an
308 unknown newsgroup in the whole list of newsgroups to which they are
309 posted. In case wanttrash is set to true, such articles will still
310 be rejected. This is a boolean value, and the default is false.
311 wanttrash
313 Set this to true if you want to file articles posted to unknown
314 newsgroups (newsgroups not in the active file) into the "junk"
315 newsgroup rather than rejecting them. This is sometimes useful for
316 a transit news server that needs to propagate articles (according
317 to the setting of "Aj" in the newsfeeds feed pattern) in all
318 newsgroups regardless if they're carried locally. This is a
319 boolean value and the default is false.
320 The logtrash parameter specifies whether such articles should be
322 logged as posted to unwanted newsgroups in the news log file.
323 wipcheck
325 If INN is offered an article by a peer on one channel, it will
326 return deferral responses (code 436) to all other offers of that
327 article for this many seconds. (After this long, if the peer that
328 offered the article still hasn't sent it, it will be accepted from
329 other channels.) The default value is 5 and probably doesn't need
330 to be changed.
331 wipexpire
333 How long, in seconds, to keep track of message IDs offered on a
334 channel before expiring articles that still haven't been sent. The
335 default value is 10 and probably doesn't need to be changed.
336 History Settings
338 The following parameter affect the history database.
339 hismethod
341 Which history storage method to use. The only currently supported
342 value is "hisv6". There is no default value; this parameter must
343 be set.
344 "hisv6"
346 Stores history data in the INN history v6 format: history(5)
347 text file and a number of dbz(3) database files; this may be in
348 true history v6 format, or tagged hash format, depending on the
349 build options. Separation of these two is a project which has
350 not yet been undertaken.
351 Article Storage
353 These parameters affect how articles are stored on disk.
354 cnfscheckfudgesize
356 If set to a value other than 0, the claimed size of articles in
357 CNFS cycbuffs is checked against maxartsize plus this value, and if
358 larger, the CNFS cycbuff is considered corrupt. This can be useful
359 as a sanity check after a system crash, but be careful using this
360 parameter if you have changed maxartsize recently. The default
361 value is 0.
362 enableoverview
364 Whether to write out overview data for articles. If set to false,
365 INN will run much faster, but reading news from the system will be
366 impossible (the server will be for news transit only). If this
367 option is set to true, ovmethod must also be set. This is a
368 boolean value and the default is true.
369 extraoverviewadvertised
371 Besides the seven standard overview fields (which are in order
372 "Subject:", "From:", "Date:", "Message-ID:", "References:",
373 ":bytes" and ":lines") and the eighth "Xref:full" field required by
374 INN in order to handle crossposts, it is possible to add other
375 fields in the overview database. This parameter expects a list of
376 such header names. Overview data for these additional headers will
377 be generated for each new article at the time of arrival. For
378 instance, if you specify:
379 extraoverviewadvertised: [ Path Injection-Info ]
381 it implies that nnrpd will advertise "Path:full" and
383 "Injection-Info:full" as the ninth and tenth fields in response to
384 LIST OVERVIEW.FMT and that these two headers will be stored in the
385 overview database for each new article.
386 The default value is an empty list (no additional fields are
388 stored). Owing to optimizations when innd parses the articles it
389 receives, it is possible that all the values in the list are not
390 recognized by innd as standard headers. In such cases, innd will
391 log an error in news.err at startup and the unrecognized fields
392 will be discarded.
393 You should advertise only fields for which the overview database is
395 consistent, that is to say it records the content or absence of
396 these fields for all articles, including those already existing in
397 the news spool. Consequently, if you decide to add or remove a
398 field from your overview database, you should either modify
399 extraoverviewadvertised and rebuild your overview database with
400 makehistory(8) after removing all existing overview files, or
401 implement a transition period by first using extraoverviewhidden as
402 described below.
403 Use of a transition period can accommodate most overview
405 reconfigurations, but certain drastic changes may still require a
406 complete overview rebuild.
407 If for instance you want to store the content of the To: header in
409 addition to the fields already stored above, you should use:
410 extraoverviewadvertised: [ Path Injection-Info ]
412 extraoverviewhidden: [ To ]
413 This way, "To:full" will not be advertised by nnrpd but will be
415 stored for each new article. Once you know that all articles in
416 your overview database record the content or absence of that new
417 field (if expire.ctl(5) is parametered so that all your articles
418 expire within 30 days, you can assume the database is in such a
419 state after 30 days -- however, note that time to expiration can be
420 unpredictable with CNFS and you then have to use "cnfsstat -a" for
421 checking on when buffers have rolled over), you should put:
422 extraoverviewadvertised: [ Path Injection-Info To ]
424 extraoverviewhidden: [ ]
425 The "To" value must be added at the end of the list because order
427 matters and fields mentioned in extraoverviewhidden are generated
428 after those mentioned in extraoverviewadvertised. nnrpd will now
429 advertise "To:full" in response to the LIST OVERVIEW.FMT command
430 ("full" indicates that the header appears followed by its value).
431 Now suppose you want to remove the content of the Injection-Info:
433 header from the overview. As order matters, the overview database
434 will no longer be consistent for the To: header. Therefore, you
435 need to specify:
436 extraoverviewadvertised: [ Path ]
438 extraoverviewhidden: [ To ]
439 And once overview data is accurate for all articles, you should
441 use:
442 extraoverviewadvertised: [ Path To ]
444 extraoverviewhidden: [ ]
445 Note that you have to restart nnrpd if it runs as a daemon whenever
447 you change the value of extraoverviewadvertised; a mere "ctlinnd
448 xexec innd" is not enough.
449 extraoverviewhidden
451 This parameter should be used in conjunction with
452 extraoverviewadvertised (see above for more details). It expects a
453 list of headers names. Overview data for these headers will be
454 generated for each new article at the time of arrival but, contrary
455 to the fields mentioned in extraoverviewadvertised, nnrpd will not
456 advertise them in response to the LIST OVERVIEW.FMT command. It
457 also implies that nnrpd will not look in the overview database for
458 fields mentioned in extraoverviewhidden when it handles HDR, XHDR
459 and XPAT requests; nnrpd will have to parse the headers of the
460 requested articles in the news spool, which is slower than directly
461 querying the overview database.
462 The default value is an empty list (no additional fields are
464 stored). Owing to optimizations when innd parses the articles it
465 receives, it is possible that all the values in the list are not
466 recognized by innd as standard headers. In such cases, innd will
467 log an error in news.err at startup and the unrecognized fields
468 will be discarded.
469 groupbaseexpiry
471 Whether to enable newsgroup-based expiry. If set to false, article
472 expiry is done based on storage class of storing method. If set to
473 true (and overview information is available), expiry is done by
474 newsgroup name. This affects the format of expire.ctl. This is a
475 boolean value and the default is true.
476 mergetogroups
478 Whether to file all postings to "to.*" groups in the
479 pseudonewsgroup "to". If this is set to true, the newsgroup "to"
480 must exist in the active file or INN will not start. (See the
481 discussion of "to." groups in innd(8) under CONTROL MESSAGES.)
482 This is a boolean value and the default is false.
483 nfswriter
485 For servers writing articles, determine whether the article spool
486 is on NFS storage. If set, INN attempts to flush articles to the
487 spool in a more timely manner, rather than relying on the operating
488 system to flush things such as the CNFS article bitmaps. You
489 should only set this parameter if you are attempting to use a
490 shared NFS spool on a machine acting as a single writer within a
491 cluster. This is a boolean value and the default is false.
492 overcachesize
494 How many cache slots to reserve for open overview files. If INN is
495 writing overview files (see enableoverview), ovmethod is set to
496 "tradindexed", and this is set to a value other than 0, INN will
497 keep around and open that many recently written-to overview files
498 in case more articles come in for those newsgroups. Every overview
499 cache slot consumes two file descriptors, so be careful not to set
500 this value too high. You may be able to use the "limit" command to
501 see how many open file descriptors your operating system allows.
502 innd(8) also uses an open file descriptor for each incoming feed
503 and outgoing channel or batch file, and if it runs out of open file
504 descriptors, it may throttle and stop accepting new news. The
505 default value is 64 (which is probably still too low if you have a
506 large number of file descriptors available).
507 This setting is ignored unless ovmethod is set to "tradindexed".
509 ovgrouppat
511 If set, restricts the overview data stored by INN to only the
512 newsgroups matching this comma-separated list of uwildmat(3)
513 expressions. Newsgroups not matching this setting may not be
514 readable, and if groupbaseexpiry is set to true and the storage
515 method for these newsgroups does not have self-expire
516 functionality, storing overview data will fail. The default is
517 unset.
518 ovmethod
520 Which overview storage method to use. Currently supported values
521 are "tradindexed", "buffindexed", and "ovdb". There is no default
522 value; this parameter must be set if enableoverview is true (the
523 default).
524 "buffindexed"
526 Stores overview data and index information into buffers, which
527 are preconfigured files defined in buffindexed.conf.
528 "buffindexed" never consumes additional disk space beyond that
529 allocated to these buffers.
530 "tradindexed"
532 Uses two files per newsgroup, one containing the overview data
533 and one containing the index. Fast for readers, but slow to
534 write to.
535 "ovdb"
537 Stores data into a Berkeley DB database. See the ovdb(5) man
538 page.
539 storeonxref
541 If set to true, articles will be stored based on the newsgroup
542 names in the Xref: header rather than in the Newsgroups: header.
543 This affects what the patterns in storage.conf apply to. The
544 primary interesting effect of setting this to true is to enable
545 filing of all control messages according to what storage class the
546 control pseudogroups are filed in rather than according to the
547 newsgroups the control messages are posted to. This is a boolean
548 value and the default is true.
549 useoverchan
551 Whether to innd(8) should create overview data internally through
552 libstorage(3). If set to false, innd creates overview data by
553 itself. If set to true, innd does not create; instead overview
554 data must be created by overchan(8) from an appropriate entry in
555 newsfeeds. Setting to true may be useful, if innd cannot keep up
556 with incoming feed and the bottleneck is creation of overview data
557 within innd. This is a boolean value and the default is false.
558 wireformat
560 Only used with the tradspool storage method, this says whether to
561 write articles in wire format. Wire format means storing articles
562 with "\r\n" at the end of each line and with periods at the
563 beginning of lines doubled, the article format required by the NNTP
564 protocol. Articles stored in this format are suitable for sending
565 directly to a network connection without requiring conversion, and
566 therefore setting this to true can make the server more efficient.
567 The primary reason not to set this is if you have old existing
568 software that looks around in the spool and doesn't understand how
569 to read wire format. Storage methods other than tradspool always
570 store articles in wire format. This is a boolean value and the
571 default is false.
572 xrefslave
574 Whether to act as the slave of another server. If set, INN
575 attempts to duplicate exactly the article numbering of the server
576 feeding it by looking at the Xref: header of incoming articles and
577 assigning the same article numbers to articles as was noted in the
578 Xref: header from the upstream server. The result is that clients
579 should be able to point at either server interchangeably (using
580 some load balancing scheme, for example) and see the same internal
581 article numbering. Servers with this parameter set should
582 generally only have one upstream feed, and should always have
583 nnrpdposthost set to hand locally posted articles off to the master
584 server. The upstream should be careful to always feed articles in
585 order (innfeed(8) can have problems with this in the event of a
586 backlog). This is a boolean value and the default is false.
587 Reading
589 These parameters affect the behavior of INN for readers. Most of them
590 are used by nnrpd(8). There are some special sets of settings that are
591 broken out separately after the initial alphabetized list.
592 Note that the two parameters nnrpperlauth and nnrppythonauth are now
594 obsolete; see "Changes to Perl Authentication Support for nnrpd" in
595 doc/hook-perl and "Changes to Python Authentication and Access Control
596 Support for nnrpd" in doc/hook-python for more information.
597 allownewnews
599 Whether to allow use of the NEWNEWS command by clients. This
600 command used to put a heavy load on the server in older versions of
601 INN, but is now reasonably efficient, at least if only one
602 newsgroup is specified by the client. This is a boolean value and
603 the default is true. If you use the access parameter in
604 readers.conf, be sure to read about the way it overrides
605 allownewnews.
606 articlemmap
608 Whether to attempt to mmap() articles. Setting this to true will
609 give better performance on most systems, but some systems have
610 problems with mmap(). If this is set to false, articles will be
611 read into memory before being sent to readers. This is a boolean
612 value and the default is true.
613 clienttimeout
615 How long (in seconds) a client connection can be idle before it
616 exits. When setting this parameter, be aware that some newsreaders
617 use the same connection for reading and posting and don't deal well
618 with the connection timing out while a post is being composed. If
619 the system isn't having a problem with too many long-lived
620 connections, it may be a good idea to increase this value to 3600
621 (an hour). The default value is 1800 (thirty minutes).
622 initialtimeout
624 How long (in seconds) nnrpd will wait for the first command from a
625 reader connection before dropping the connection. This is a
626 defensive timeout intended to protect the news server from badly
627 behaved reader clients that open and abandon a multitude of
628 connections without every closing them. The default value is 10
629 (ten seconds), which may need to be increased if many clients
630 connect via slow network links.
631 msgidcachesize
633 How many cache slots to reserve for message-IDs to storage token
634 translations. When serving overview data to clients (NEWNEWS,
635 OVER, etc.), nnrpd(8) can cache the storage token associated with a
636 message-ID and save the cost of looking it up in the history file;
637 for some configurations, setting this parameter can save more than
638 90% of the wall clock time for a session. The default value is
639 16000.
640 nfsreader
642 For servers reading articles, determine whether the article spool
643 is on NFS storage. If set, INN will attempt to force articles and
644 overviews to be read directly from the NFS spool rather than from
645 cached copies. You should only set this parameter if you are
646 attempting to use a shared NFS spool on a machine acting as a
647 reader within a cluster. This is a boolean value and the default
648 is false.
649 nfsreaderdelay
651 If nfsreader is set, INN will use the value of nfsreaderdelay to
652 delay the apparent arrival time of articles to clients by this
653 amount. Note that only answers to GROUP and NEWNEWS commands are
654 affected. This value should be tuned based on the NFS cache
655 timeouts locally. The default is 60, that is to say one minute.
656 nnrpdcheckart
658 Whether nnrpd should check the existence of an article before
659 listing it as present in response to an NNTP command. The primary
660 use of this setting is to prevent nnrpd from returning information
661 about articles which are no longer present on the server but which
662 still have overview data available. Checking the existence of
663 articles before returning overview information slows down the
664 overview commands, but reduces the number of "article is missing"
665 errors seen by the client. This is a boolean value and the default
666 is true.
667 nnrpdflags
669 When nnrpd(8) is spawned from innd(8), these flags are passed as
670 arguments to the nnrpd process. This setting does not affect
671 instances of nnrpd that are started in daemon mode, or instances
672 that are started via another listener process such as inetd(8) or
673 xinetd(8). Shell quoting and metacharacters are not supported.
674 This is a string value and the default is unset.
675 nnrpdloadlimit
677 If set to a value other than 0, connections to nnrpd will be
678 refused if the system load average is higher than this value. The
679 default value is 16.
680 noreader
682 Normally, innd(8) will fork a copy of nnrpd(8) for all incoming
683 connections from hosts not listed in incoming.conf. If this
684 parameter is set to true, those connections will instead be
685 rejected with a 502 error code. This should be set to true for a
686 transit-only server that doesn't support readers, or if nnrpd is
687 running in daemon mode or being started out of inetd. This is a
688 boolean value and the default is false.
689 readerswhenstopped
691 Whether to allow readers to connect even if the server is paused or
692 throttled. This is only applicable if nnrpd(8) is spawned from
693 innd(8) rather than run out of inetd or in daemon mode. This is a
694 boolean value and the default is false.
695 readertrack
697 Whether to enable the tracking system for client behavior. Tracked
698 information is recorded to pathlog/tracklogs/log-ID, where ID is
699 determined by nnrpd's PID and launch time.) Currently the
700 information recorded includes initial connection and posting; only
701 information about clients listed in nnrpd.track is recorded. This
702 is a boolean value and the default is false.
703 tradindexedmmap
705 Whether to attempt to mmap() tradindexed overviews articles.
706 Setting this to true will give better performance on most systems,
707 but some systems have problems with mmap(). If this is set to
708 false, overviews will be read into memory before being sent to
709 readers. This is a boolean value and the default is true.
710 INN has optional support for generating keyword information
712 automatically from article body text and putting that information in
713 overview for the use of clients that know to look for it (HDR, OVER and
714 XPAT commands). The following parameters control that feature.
715 This may be too slow if you're taking a substantial feed, and probably
717 will not be useful for the average news reader; enabling this is not
718 recommended unless you have some specific intention to take advantage
719 of it.
720 keywords
722 Whether the keyword generation support should be enabled. This is
723 a boolean value and the default is false.
724 If an article already contains a Keywords: header, no keyword
726 generation is done and the original Keywords: header is kept
727 untouched.
728 In order to use this feature, the regex library should be available
730 and INN configured with the --enable-keywords flag. Otherwise, no
731 keywords will be generated, even though this boolean value is set
732 to true. You also have to add the integration of the Keywords:
733 header into the overview with extraoverviewadvertised or
734 extraoverviewhidden.
735 keyartlimit
737 Articles larger than this value in bytes will not have keywords
738 generated for them (since it would take too long to do so). The
739 default value is 100000 (approximately 100 KB).
740 keylimit
742 Maximum number of bytes allocated for keyword data. If there are
743 more keywords than will fit into this many bytes when separated by
744 commas, the rest are discarded. The default value is 512.
745 keymaxwords
747 Maximum number of keywords that will be generated for an article.
748 (The keyword generation code will attempt to discard "noise" words,
749 so the number of keywords actually written into the overview will
750 usually be smaller than this even if the maximum number of keywords
751 is found.) The default value is 250.
752 Posting
754 These parameters are only used by nnrpd(8), inews(1), and other
755 programs that accept or generate postings. There are some special sets
756 of settings that are broken out separately after the initial
757 alphabetized list.
758 addnntppostingdate
760 Whether to add an NNTP-Posting-Date: header to all local posts.
761 This is a boolean value and the default is true.
762 addnntppostinghost
764 Whether to add an NNTP-Posting-Host: header to all local posts
765 giving the FQDN or IP address of the system from which the post was
766 received. This is a boolean value and the default is true. Note
767 that INN either does not add this header or adds the name or IP
768 address of the client. There is no intrinsic support for
769 obfuscating the name of the client. That has to be done with a
770 user-written Perl filter, if desired.
771 checkincludedtext
773 Whether to check local postings for the ratio of new to quoted text
774 and reject them if that ratio is under 50%. Included text is
775 recognized by looking for lines beginning with ">", "|", or ":".
776 This is a boolean value and the default is false.
777 complaints
779 The value of the X-Complaints-To: header added to all local posts.
780 The default is the newsmaster's e-mail address. (If the
781 newsmaster, selected at configure time and defaulting to "usenet",
782 doesn't contain "@", the address will consist of the newsmaster, a
783 "@", and the value of fromhost.)
784 fromhost
786 Contains a domain used to construct e-mail addresses. The address
787 of the local news administrator will be given as <user>@fromhost,
788 where <user> is the newsmaster user set at compile time ("usenet"
789 by default). This setting will also be used by mailpost(8) to
790 fully qualify addresses and by inews(1) to generate the Sender:
791 header (and From: header if missing). The value of the FROMHOST
792 environment variable, if set, overrides this setting. The default
793 is the fully-qualified domain name of the local host.
794 localmaxartsize
796 The maximum article size (in bytes) for locally posted articles.
797 Articles larger than this will be rejected. A value of 0 allows
798 any size of article, but note that nnrpd and innd will crash if
799 system memory is exceeded. See also maxartsize, which applies to
800 all articles including those posted locally. The default value is
801 1000000 (approximately 1 MB).
802 moderatormailer
804 The address to which to send submissions for moderated groups. It
805 is only used if the moderators file doesn't exist, or if the
806 moderated group to which an article is posted is not matched by any
807 entry in that file, and takes the same form as an entry in the
808 moderators file. In most cases, "%s@moderators.isc.org" is a good
809 value for this parameter (%s is expanded into a form of the
810 newsgroup name). See moderators(5) for more details about the
811 syntax. The default is unset. If this parameter isn't set and an
812 article is posted to a moderated group that does not have a
813 matching entry in the moderators file, the posting will be rejected
814 with an error.
815 nnrpdauthsender
817 Whether to generate a Sender: header based on reader
818 authentication. If this parameter is set, a Sender: header will be
819 added to local posts containing the identity assigned by
820 readers.conf. If the assigned identity does not include an "@",
821 the reader's hostname is used. If this parameter is set but no
822 identity is assigned, the Sender: header will be removed from all
823 posts even if the poster includes one. This is a boolean value and
824 the default is false.
825 nnrpdposthost
827 If set, nnrpd(8) and rnews(1) will pass all locally posted articles
828 to the specified host rather than trying to inject them locally.
829 See also nnrpdpostport. This should always be set if xrefslave is
830 true. The default value is unset.
831 nnrpdpostport
833 The port on the remote server to connect to to post when
834 nnrpdposthost is used. The default value is 119.
835 organization
837 What to put in the Organization: header if it is left blank by the
838 poster. The value of the ORGANIZATION environment variable, if
839 set, overrides this setting. The default is unset, which tells INN
840 not to insert an Organization: header.
841 spoolfirst
843 If true, nnrpd(8) will spool new articles rather than attempting to
844 send them to innd(8). If false, nnrpd will spool articles only if
845 it receives an error trying to send them to innd. Setting this to
846 true can be useful if nnrpd must respond as fast as possible to the
847 client; however, when set, articles will not appear to readers
848 until they are given to innd. nnrpd won't do this; "rnews -U" must
849 be run periodically to take the spooled articles and post them.
850 This is a boolean value and the default is false.
851 strippostcc
853 Whether to strip To:, Cc:, and Bcc: headers out of all local posts
854 via nnrpd(8). The primary purpose of this setting is to prevent
855 abuse of the news server by posting to a moderated group and
856 including To: or Cc: headers in the post so that the news server
857 will send the article to arbitrary addresses. INN now protects
858 against this abuse in other ways provided mta is set to a command
859 that includes %s and honors it, so this is generally no longer
860 needed. This is a boolean value and the default is false.
861 nnrpd(8) has support for controlling high-volume posters via an
863 exponential backoff algorithm, as configured by the following
864 parameters.
865 Exponential posting backoff works as follows: news clients are indexed
867 by IP address (or username, see backoffauth below). Each time a post
868 is received from an IP address, the time of posting is stored (along
869 with the previous sleep time, see below). After a configurable number
870 of posts in a configurable period of time, nnrpd(8) will begin to sleep
871 for increasing periods of time before actually posting anything
872 (posting backoff is therefore activated). Posts will still be
873 accepted, but at an increasingly reduced rate.
874 After backoff has been activated, the length of time to sleep is
876 computed based on the difference in time between the last posting and
877 the current posting. If this difference is less than backoffpostfast,
878 the new sleep time will be 1 + (previous sleep time * backoffk). If
879 this difference is less than backoffpostslow but greater than
880 backoffpostfast, then the new sleep time will equal the previous sleep
881 time. If this difference is greater than backoffpostslow, the new
882 sleep time is zero and posting backoff is deactivated for this poster.
883 (Note that this does not mean posting backoff cannot be reactivated
884 later in the session.)
885 Exponential posting backoff will not be enabled unless backoffdb is set
887 and backoffpostfast and backoffpostslow are set to something other than
888 their default values.
889 Here are the parameters that control exponential posting backoff:
891 backoffauth
893 Whether to index posting backoffs by user rather than by source IP
894 address. You must be using authentication in nnrpd(8) for a value
895 of true to have any meaning. This is a boolean value and the
896 default is false.
897 backoffdb
899 The path to a directory, writeable by the news user, that will
900 contain the backoff database. There is no default for this
901 parameter; you must provide a path to a creatable or writeable
902 directory to enable exponential backoff.
903 backoffk
905 The amount to multiply the previous sleep time by if the user is
906 still posting too quickly. A value of 2 will double the sleep time
907 for each excessive post. The default value is 1.
908 backoffpostfast
910 Postings from the same identity that arrive in less than this
911 amount of time (in seconds) will trigger increasing sleep time in
912 the backoff algorithm. The default value is 0.
913 backoffpostslow
915 Postings from the same identity that arrive in greater than this
916 amount of time (in seconds) will reset the backoff algorithm.
917 Another way to look at this constant is to realize that posters
918 will be allowed to generate at most 86400/backoffpostslow posts per
919 day. The default value is 1.
920 backofftrigger
922 This many postings are allowed before the backoff algorithm is
923 triggered. The default value is 10000.
924 Finally, here are the parameters used by nnrpd(8) to provide TLS/SSL
926 support:
927 tlscafile
929 The path to a file containing certificate authority root
930 certificates, used to present a trust chain to a TLS client. This
931 parameter is only used if nnrpd is built with TLS/SSL support. The
932 default value is an empty string.
933 tlscapath
935 The path to a directory containing certificate authority root
936 certificates. Each file in the directory should contain one CA
937 certificate, and the name of the file should be the CA subject name
938 hash value. See the OpenSSL documentation for more information.
939 This parameter is only used if nnrpd is built with TLS/SSL support.
940 The default value is pathetc.
941 tlscertfile
943 The path to a file containing the server certificate to present to
944 TLS clients. This parameter is only used if nnrpd is built with
945 TLS/SSL support. The default value is pathetc/cert.pem.
946 tlskeyfile
948 The path to a file containing the encryption key for the server
949 certificate named in tlscertfile. This may be the same as
950 tlscertfile if, when you created the certificate, you put the key
951 in the same file (if, for example, you gave the same file name to
952 both the -out and -keyout options to "openssl req"). This
953 parameter is only used if nnrpd is built with TLS/SSL support. The
954 default value is pathetc/key.pem.
955 This file must only be readable by the news user or nnrpd will
957 refuse to use it.
958 Monitoring
960 These parameters control the behavior of innwatch(8), the program that
961 monitors INN and informs the news administrator if anything goes wrong
962 with it.
963 doinnwatch
965 Whether to start innwatch(8) from rc.news. This is a boolean
966 value, and the default is true.
967 innwatchbatchspace
969 Free space in pathoutgoing, in inndf(8) output units (normally
970 kilobytes), at which innd(8) will be throttled by innwatch(8),
971 assuming a default innwatch.ctl. The default value is 4000.
972 innwatchlibspace
974 Free space in pathdb, in inndf(8) output units (normally
975 kilobytes), at which innd(8) will be throttled by innwatch(8),
976 assuming a default innwatch.ctl. The default value is 25000.
977 innwatchloload
979 Load average times 100 at which innd(8) will be restarted by
980 innwatch(8) (undoing a previous pause or throttle), assuming a
981 default innwatch.ctl. The default value is 1000 (that is, a load
982 average of 10.00).
983 innwatchhiload
985 Load average times 100 at which innd(8) will be throttled by
986 innwatch(8), assuming a default innwatch.ctl. The default value is
987 2000 (that is, a load average of 20.00).
988 innwatchpauseload
990 Load average times 100 at which innd(8) will be paused by
991 innwatch(8), assuming a default innwatch.ctl. The default value is
992 1500 (that is, a load average of 15.00).
993 innwatchsleeptime
995 How long (in seconds) innwatch(8) will sleep between each check of
996 INN. The default value is 600.
997 innwatchspoolnodes
999 Free inodes in patharticles at which innd(8) will be throttled by
1000 innwatch(8), assuming a default innwatch.ctl. The default value is
1001 200.
1002 innwatchspoolspace
1004 Free space in patharticles and pathoverview, in inndf(8) output
1005 units (normally kilobytes), at which innd(8) will be throttled by
1006 innwatch(8), assuming a default innwatch.ctl. The default value is
1007 25000.
1008 Logging
1010 These parameters control what information INN logs.
1011 docnfsstat
1013 Whether to start cnfsstat(8) when innd(8) is started. cnfsstat
1014 will log the status of all CNFS cycbuffs to syslog on a periodic
1015 basis (frequency is the default for "cnfsstat -l", currently 600
1016 seconds). This is a boolean value and the default is false.
1017 incominglogfrequency
1019 How many articles to process on an incoming channel before logging
1020 the activity. The default value is 200.
1021 logartsize
1023 Whether the size of accepted articles (in bytes) should be written
1024 to the article log file. This is useful for flow rate statistics
1025 and is recommended. This is a boolean value and the default is
1026 true.
1027 logcancelcomm
1029 Set this to true to log "ctlinnd cancel" commands to syslog. This
1030 is a boolean value and the default is false.
1031 logcycles
1033 How many old logs scanlogs(8) keeps. scanlogs(8) is generally run
1034 by news.daily(8) and will archive compressed copies of this many
1035 days worth of old logs. The default value is 3.
1036 logipaddr
1038 Whether the verified name of the remote feeding host should be
1039 logged to the article log for incoming articles rather than the
1040 last entry in the Path: header. The only reason to ever set this
1041 to false is due to some interactions with newsfeeds flags; see
1042 newsfeeds(5) for more information. This is a boolean value and the
1043 default is true.
1044 logsitename
1046 Whether the names of the sites to which accepted articles will be
1047 sent should be put into the article log file. This is useful for
1048 debugging and statistics. This is a boolean value and the default
1049 is true.
1050 logstatus
1052 Whether innd should write a shortened version of its status report
1053 to syslog every status seconds. This is a boolean value and the
1054 default is false. If set to true, see the status parameter for
1055 more details on how to enable status reporting.
1056 logtrash
1058 Whether innd should add a line in the news log file to report
1059 unwanted newsgroups (that is to say newsgroups not locally carried
1060 by the news server). This is a boolean value and the default is
1061 true. It may be useful to set it to false when wanttrash is set to
1062 true.
1063 nnrpdoverstats
1065 Whether nnrpd overview statistics should be logged via syslog.
1066 This can be useful for measuring overview performance. This is a
1067 boolean value and the default is false.
1068 nntplinklog
1070 Whether to put the storage API token for accepted articles (used by
1071 nntplink) in the article log. This is a boolean value and the
1072 default is false.
1073 stathist
1075 Where to write history statistics for analysis with
1076 contrib/stathist.pl; this can be modified with ctlinnd(8) while
1077 innd is running. Logging does not occur unless a path is given,
1078 and there is no default value.
1079 status
1081 How frequently (in seconds) innd(8) should write out a status
1082 report. The report is written to pathhttp/inn_status.html. If
1083 this is set to 0 or "false", status reporting is disabled. The
1084 default value is 0.
1085 timer
1087 How frequently (in seconds) innd(8) should report performance
1088 timings to syslog. If this is set to 0, performance timing is
1089 disabled. Enabling this is highly recommended, and innreport(8)
1090 can produce a nice summary of the timings. If set to 0,
1091 performance timings in nnrpd(8) are also disabled, although nnrpd
1092 always reports statistics on exit and therefore any non-zero value
1093 is equivalent for it. The default value is 0.
1094 System Tuning
1096 The following parameters can be modified to tune the low-level
1097 operation of INN. In general, you shouldn't need to modify any of them
1098 except possibly rlimitnofile unless the server is having difficulty.
1099 badiocount
1101 How many read or write failures until a channel is put to sleep or
1102 closed. The default value is 5.
1103 blockbackoff
1105 Each time an attempted write returns EAGAIN or EWOULDBLOCK, innd(8)
1106 will wait for an increasing number of seconds before trying it
1107 again. This is the multiplier for the sleep time. If you're
1108 having trouble with channel feeds not keeping up, it may be good to
1109 change this value to 2 or 3, since then when the channel fills INN
1110 will try again in a couple of seconds rather than waiting two
1111 minutes. The default value is 120.
1112 chaninacttime
1114 The time (in seconds) to wait between noticing inactive channels.
1115 The default value is 600.
1116 chanretrytime
1118 How many seconds to wait before a channel restarts. The default
1119 value is 300.
1120 datamovethreshold
1122 The threshold for deciding whether to move already-read data to the
1123 top of buffer or extend the buffer. The buffer described here is
1124 used for reading NNTP data. Increasing this value may improve
1125 performance, but it should not be increased on Systems with
1126 insufficient memory. Permitted values are between 0 and 1048576
1127 (out of range values are treated as 1048576) and the default value
1128 is 8192.
1129 icdsynccount
1131 How many article writes between updating the active and history
1132 files. The default value is 10.
1133 keepmmappedthreshold
1135 When using buffindexed, retrieving overview data (that is,
1136 responding to OVER or running expireover) causes mmapping of all
1137 overview data blocks which include requested overview data for
1138 newsgroup. But for high volume newsgroups like control.cancel,
1139 this may cause too much mmapping at once leading to system resource
1140 problems. To avoid this, if the amount to be mmapped exceeds
1141 keepmmappedthreshold (in KB), buffindexed mmap's just one overview
1142 block (8 KB). This parameter is specific to buffindexed overview
1143 storage method. The default value is 1024 (1 MB).
1144 maxcmdreadsize
1146 If set to anything other than 0, maximum buffer size (in bytes) for
1147 reading NNTP command will have this value. It should not be large
1148 on systems which are slow to process and store articles, as that
1149 would lead to innd(8) spending a long time on each channel and
1150 keeping other channels waiting. The default value is BUFSIZ
1151 defined in stdio.h (1024 in most environments, see setbuf(3)).
1152 maxforks
1154 How many times to attempt a fork(2) before giving up. The default
1155 value is 10.
1156 nicekids
1158 If set to anything other than 0, all child processes of innd(8)
1159 will have this nice(2) value. This is usually used to give all
1160 child processes of innd(8) a lower priority (higher nice value) so
1161 that innd(8) can get the lion's share of the CPU when it needs it.
1162 The default value is 4.
1163 nicenewnews
1165 If set to anything greater than 0, all nnrpd(8) processes that
1166 receive and process a NEWNEWS command will nice(2) themselves to
1167 this value (giving other nnrpd processes a higher priority). The
1168 default value is 0. Note that this value will be ignored if set to
1169 a lower value than nicennrpd (or nicekids if nnrpd(8) is spawned
1170 from innd(8)).
1171 nicennrpd
1173 If set to anything greater than 0, all nnrpd(8) processes will
1174 nice(1) themselves to this value. This gives other news processes
1175 a higher priority and can help overchan(8) keep up with incoming
1176 news (if that's the object, be sure overchan(8) isn't also set to a
1177 lower priority via nicekids). The default value is 0, which will
1178 cause nnrpd(8) processes spawned from innd(8) to use the value of
1179 nicekids, while nnrpd(8) run as a daemon will use the system
1180 default priority. Note that for nnrpd(8) processes spawned from
1181 innd(8), this value will be ignored if set to a value lower than
1182 nicekids.
1183 pauseretrytime
1185 Wait for this many seconds before noticing inactive channels. Wait
1186 for this many seconds before innd processes articles when it's
1187 paused or the number of channel write failures exceeds badiocount.
1188 The default value is 300.
1189 peertimeout
1191 How long (in seconds) an innd(8) incoming channel may be inactive
1192 before innd closes it. The default value is 3600 (an hour).
1193 rlimitnofile
1195 The maximum number of file descriptors that innd(8) or innfeed(8)
1196 can have open at once. If innd(8) or innfeed(8) attempts to open
1197 more file descriptors than this value, it is possible the program
1198 may throttle or otherwise suffer reduced functionality. The number
1199 of open file descriptors is roughly the maximum number of incoming
1200 feeds and outgoing batches for innd(8) and the number of outgoing
1201 streams for innfeed(8). If this parameter is set to a negative
1202 value, the default limit of the operating system will be used; this
1203 will normally be adequate on systems other than Solaris. Nearly
1204 all operating systems have some hard maximum limit beyond which
1205 this value cannot be raised, usually either 128, 256, or 1024. The
1206 default value of this parameter is "-1". Setting it to 256 on
1207 Solaris systems is highly recommended.
1208 Paths Names
1210 patharchive
1211 Where to store archived news. The default value is
1212 pathspool/archive.
1213 patharticles
1215 The path to where the news articles are stored (for storage methods
1216 other than CNFS). The default value is pathspool/articles.
1217 pathbin
1219 The path to the news binaries. The default value is pathnews/bin.
1220 pathcontrol
1222 The path to the files that handle control messages. The code for
1223 handling each separate type of control message is located here. Be
1224 very careful what you put in this directory with a name ending in
1225 ".pl", as it can potentially be a severe security risk. The
1226 default value is pathbin/control.
1227 pathdb
1229 The path to the database files used and updated by the server
1230 (currently, active, active.times, history and its indices, and
1231 newsgroups). The default value is pathnews/db.
1232 pathetc
1234 The path to the news configuration files. The default value is
1235 pathnews/etc.
1236 pathfilter
1238 The path to the Perl and Python filters. The default value is
1239 pathbin/filter.
1240 pathhttp
1242 Where any HTML files (such as periodic status reports) are placed.
1243 If the news reports should be available in real-time on the web,
1244 the files in this directory should be served by a web server. The
1245 default value is the value of pathnews/http.
1246 pathincoming
1248 Location where incoming batched news is stored. The default value
1249 is pathspool/incoming.
1250 pathlog
1252 Where the news log files are written. The default value is
1253 pathnews/log.
1254 pathnews
1256 The home directory of the news user and usually the root of the
1257 news hierarchy. There is no default; this parameter must be set in
1258 inn.conf or INN will refuse to start.
1259 pathoutgoing
1261 Default location for outgoing feed files. The default value is
1262 pathspool/outgoing.
1263 pathoverview
1265 The path to news overview files. The default value is
1266 pathspool/overview.
1267 pathrun
1269 The path to files required while the server is running and run-time
1270 state information. This includes lock files and the sockets for
1271 communicating with innd(8). This directory and the control sockets
1272 in it should be protected from unprivileged users other than the
1273 news user. The default value is pathnews/run.
1274 pathspool
1276 The root of the news spool hierarchy. This used mostly to set the
1277 defaults for other parameters, and to determine the path to the
1278 backlog directory for innfeed(8). The default value is
1279 pathnews/spool.
1280 pathtmp
1282 Where INN puts temporary files. For security reasons, this is not
1283 the same as the system temporary files directory (INN creates a lot
1284 of temporary files with predictable names and does not go to
1285 particularly great lengths to protect against symlink attacks and
1286 the like; this is safe provided that normal users can't write into
1287 its temporary directory). The default value is set at configure
1288 time and defaults to pathnews/tmp.
1289
1291 Here is a very minimalist example that only sets those parameters that
1292 are required.
1293 mta: "/usr/lib/sendmail -oi -oem %s"
1295 ovmethod: tradindexed
1296 pathhost: news.example.com
1297 pathnews: /usr/local/news
1298 hismethod: hisv6
1299 For a more comprehensive example, see the sample inn.conf distributed
1301 with INN and installed as a starting point; it contains all of the
1302 default values for reference.
1303
1305 Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews and since
1306 modified, updated, and reorganized by innumerable other people.
1307 $Id: inn.conf.pod 8957 2010-02-08 20:52:50Z iulius $
1309
1311 inews(1), innd(8), innwatch(8), makehistory(8), nnrpd(8), rnews(1).
1312 Nearly every program in INN uses this file to one degree or another.
1314 The above are just the major and most frequently mentioned ones.
1315INN 2.5.2 2010-08-11 INN.CONF(5)