Leafnode: README

"Fossies" - the Fresh Open Source Software Archive

Member "leafnode-1.12.0/README" (28 Dec 2021, 13383 Bytes) of package /linux/misc/leafnode-1.12.0.tar.xz:

As a special service "Fossies" has tried to format the requested text file into HTML format (style: standard) with prefixed line numbers. Alternatively you can here view or download the uninterpreted source code file. See also the latest Fossies "Diffs" side-by-side code changes report for "README":

1.11.12_vs_1.12.0.

1 ===== IMPORTANT 2 3 Make sure that you have the most current version of leafnode installed. 4 Check http://sourceforge.net/projects/leafnode/ for updates. 5 6 You are encouraged to subscribe to the leafnode-announce mailing list, 7 available from the address above by clicking on "Lists". 8 9 ===== TABLE OF CONTENTS 10 11 - OVERVIEW 12 - FILES AND DIRECTORIES 13 - THE FILTER FILE 14 - INSTALLATION 15 - UPDATE FROM VERSIONS < 1.6 16 - UPDATE FROM VERSIONS < 1.9.3 17 - UPDATE FROM VERSIONS < 1.9.20 -- IMPORTANT! INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES HERE! 18 - UPDATE FROM VERSIONS < 1.9.23 -- IMPORTANT! INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES HERE! 19 - UPDATE FROM VERSIONS < 1.11.0 -- IMPORTANT! INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES HERE! 20 - TROUBLESHOOTING (formerly called DEBUGGING) 21 - PROBLEMS 22 - HACKING 23 24 ===== OVERVIEW 25 26 Leafnode is a USENET software package designed for small sites, with a 27 few tens of readers and only a slow link to the net. 28 29 It consists of several programs, three essential ones and several add-ons. 30 31 - Leafnode is the NNTP server. It talks to the normal news clients, 32 and stores readership data. 33 34 - Fetchnews is the NNTP news-gatherer. It looks at the readership data 35 Leafnode stores, and selects what groups to pull news from. 36 37 - Texpire is responsible for deleting old and uninteresting news. It 38 deletes all discussion threads that are old and not recently read. 39 40 These are the add-ons that ship with leafnode: 41 42 - Applyfilter lets you delete articles from your local news spool 43 which fit a certain pattern. 44 45 - Checkgroups inserts the titles of newsgroups into the newsgroup 46 database. 47 48 - Newsq shows which news are waiting to be transferred to your upstream 49 server. 50 51 There are third-party add-ons for leafnode, listed in the "ADD-ONS" file. 52 53 54 Only groups that someone has been reading in the past week are fetched 55 from the upstream NNTP server. When someone stops reading a group, 56 fetchnews will stop reading that group a week later (this is the default 57 which can be configured), and when someone starts reading a group, fetchnews 58 will grab all the articles it can in that group the next time it runs. 59 60 Here are Leafnode's distinguishing features: 61 62 - Uses very little disk space and bandwidth compared to other servers. 63 Obviously truer for 3-user sites than for 30-user, and probably wholly 64 untrue for 300-user sites. 65 66 - Easy configuration and maintenance. Leafnode tries very hard to 67 recover automatically from error situations. 68 69 - The newsspool can be easily manipulated by small scripts. Some tiny 70 examples are in the subdirectory tools/ . 71 72 As most programs, Leafnode has also weaknesses: 73 74 - Scales very badly. 75 76 - Logging and screen output are inconsistent at times. 77 78 79 The current version of leafnode is available from: 80 81 http://sourceforge.net/projects/leafnode/ 82 http://www.leafnode.org/ 83 84 There is also a leafnode mailing list. Send mail to 85 86 leafnode-list-subscribe@leafnode.org 87 88 to subscribe, or visit 89 https://www.leafnode.org/mailman/listinfo/leafnode-list/ 90 91 The list subscription triggers a challenge email that you need to answer 92 before the subscription becomes effective, so that nobody can subscribe you 93 without your prior consent. 94 95 The list archives are at: 96 https://www.leafnode.org/pipermail/leafnode-list/ 97 98 ===== FILES AND DIRECTORIES 99 100 Leafnode puts its files in three separate directories: The spool 101 directory, the library directory, and the binaries directory. All 102 directories can be changed at compile time. 103 104 In the spool directory you find the stored news, the active file and 105 some other short-lived configuration file. It defaults to /var/spool/news 106 and can be changed at compilation time. There are some special 107 directories here; see the leafnode(8) man page. 108 109 The configuration directory contains long-lived configuration files. It 110 defaults to /etc/leafnode. 111 112 The binaries directory, /usr/local/sbin by default, contains the 113 executable programs applyfilter, texpire, fetchnews and leafnode. 114 115 The user directory, /usr/local/bin by default, contains the newsq 116 and leafnode-version programs. 117 118 119 ===== THE FILTER FILE 120 121 Since version 1.8, leafnode supports filtering of incoming headers for 122 arbitrary regular expressions. This feature is by default deactivated. 123 To activate it, you must write a file which contains the regular 124 expressions to be filtered (the "filter file") and in addition point 125 leafnode to this file by entering a line of the format 126 127 filterfile = /path/to/your/filterfile 128 129 into your $(LIBDIR)/config. 130 The format of the filterfile is as follows: 131 1) One regular expression per line 132 2) Comments start with # at the beginning of a line 133 3) Empty lines are allowed 134 135 Here is a short example which will kill everything posted to alt.flame: 136 137 ^Newsgroups:.*[, ]alt.flame$ 138 ^Newsgroups:.*[, ]alt.flame, 139 140 You cannot use 141 142 ^Newsgroups:.*alt.flame 143 144 because this will also kill postings to alt.flame.nice or comp.alt.flame. 145 146 Since version 1.9.3 and up to 1.11.X, leafnode used Perl-compatible regular 147 expressions which are implemented in the PCRE library written by Philip 148 Hazel, University of Cambridge, UK. Perl regular expressions should be 149 explained in any reasonable book about Perl. There is also a whole book 150 about regular expressions published by O'Reilly. A rather technical 151 explanation is given in the pcre2(3) manual page. 152 153 Since version 1.12.0, leafnode uses the PCRE2 library by the same author, 154 see pcre2(3) or https://www.pcre.org/current/doc/html/index.html 155 or its home page https://github.com/PhilipHazel/pcre2 156 157 ===== INSTALLATION 158 159 Read the file INSTALL. 160 161 162 163 ===== UPDATE FROM VERSIONS < 1.6 164 165 There are some major changes from leafnode versions previous to 1.6. 166 These include leafnode-1.6alpha. 167 168 1) The format of the groupinfo file has changed. 169 170 2) Some files (including the groupinfo file) have moved from 171 /usr/lib/leafnode/ to /var/spool/news/leaf.node/ 172 173 3) The article information for the main upstream server has 174 been moved from groupinfo into a separate file. 175 176 To update correctly, do a "make update" as root after you have 177 successfully completed "make install". See the file INSTALL for more 178 details. 179 180 ===== UPDATE FROM VERSIONS < 1.9.3 181 182 There is one more change from leafnode versions prior to 1.9.3. These 183 include leafnode-1.9.3beta versions up to leafnode-1.9.3b5. 184 185 The change is that the groupinfo file is now sorted in a case-insensitive 186 manner. To update correctly, do a "make update" as root after you have 187 successfully completed "make install". See the file INSTALL for more 188 details. 189 190 ===== UPDATE FROM VERSIONS < 1.9.20 191 192 Note: some things have changed in 1.9.20. 193 194 1. Fetchnews now tries to send XOVER to figure which articles to 195 download, older versions only used XHDR. Leafnode will automatically fall 196 back to using XHDR if XOVER fails. 197 198 2. Most leafnode programs enforce a fully-qualified unique domain name 199 and exit if gethostbyname("HOSTNAME") does not yield one. (HOSTNAME 200 is the hostname obtained from gethostname.) The important thing here 201 is that the hostname must be globally unique: only one computer (and 202 none else) in the world - yours - may use that name. You will lose 203 your own posts if this is not the case. Therefore, domain names like 204 "localhost.localdomain" do not qualify and are rejected. 205 206 This hostname need not be registered in DNS if it's explicitly 207 specified in the configuration file. 208 209 See the separate README-FQDN* documentation for details, it is 210 available (with identical contents) in plain text and HTML formats. 211 212 3. The behaviour of the out.going posting queue has changed. If a post 213 to an upstream server fails, the article is now moved straight into 214 failed.postings. Formerly, it would be tried on other servers. 215 216 4. In adverse conditions, when fetchnews cannot obtain the lock file, it 217 may leave files like /var/spool/news/leaf.node/lock.file.XXFjkle8w3 218 behind. You can remove these files at any time UNLESS fetchnews or 219 texpire is running at the same time. 220 221 ===== UPDATE FROM VERSIONS < 1.9.23 222 223 --- REMOTE ACCESS TO LEAFNODE LISTENING ON NNTP PORT 224 225 If you want to give remote users (that are not in your LANs) access to your 226 server, you previously only needed to allow them in access in hosts.allow. 227 228 Since leafnode 1.9.23, an additional parameter is required to be set to allow 229 users outside of your LAN access to your leafnode. The config.example file 230 has documentation on how to set this parameter. This is meant as additional 231 security measure when some novice user hoses his access control 232 configuration, there have been recurring reports of "I did not ever touch 233 that newsgroup, but leafnode is pulling news for that group nonetheless" -- 234 these may have been caused by unauthorized access that was accidentally 235 granted. Note: This code is somewhat stupid for IPv6, and considers link- or 236 site local addresses "local". The IPv4 code checks the leafnode computer's 237 addresses and netmasks instead. 238 239 DISTRIBUTORS: DO _NOT_ SET THAT PARAMETER OR EVEN CHANGE THE COMMENT IN 240 YOUR EXAMPLE CONFIG. YOU WILL BE PUBLICALLY ACCUSED ON BUGTRAQ ET AL. 241 242 WE CAN SAFELY AND SOUNDLY ASSUME THAT PEOPLE WHO WANT TO RUN WORLD-WIDE 243 ACCESSIBLE SERVERS CAN READ DOCUMENTATION. 244 245 ===== UPDATE FROM VERSIONS < 1.11.0 246 247 1. Configuration change: 248 249 The parser for the configuration and filter files now understands quoted 250 strings on the right hand side of the configuration or filter lines, with 251 simple backslash (\) escapes, to allow for hash marks (#), quote marks (") 252 and leading or trailing blanks in passwords. If such characters are used in 253 filters or configuration options, you will need to change the lines, see the 254 leafnode(8) manual page for details. 255 256 2. IPv6 support in fetchnews: 257 258 fetchnews supports IPv6 since v1.11.0. This still needs the ./configure 259 option --with-ipv6 and, of course, an operating system with IPv6 and IPv6 260 network connectivity - the latter is not widespread yet. No special 261 configuration options beyond the compile-time option is required, fetchnews 262 will transparently use IPv6 addresses if the name lookup for a server yields 263 IPv6 addresses. 264 265 ===== TROUBLESHOOTING (formerly called DEBUGGING) 266 267 To get more verbose logs out of leafnode, do this: 268 269 1. log in as root 270 271 2. in your /etc/leafnode/config, add a line "debugmode=1" to the top of 272 the file. 273 274 3. in your /etc/syslog.conf, add this line: 275 276 news.debug /var/log/news.all 277 278 There is a tab character between the columns here. 279 280 Note that a line with news.=debug is fundamentally different. 281 "news.debug" means "debug level or more severe" whereas 282 "news.=debug" means "only debug level". 283 284 DO NOT USE news.=debug, BUT CHANGE IT TO news.debug INSTEAD 285 if you want to see what's going on. 286 287 4. touch /var/log/news.all 288 289 5. kill -HUP `cat /var/run/syslogd.pid` 290 291 On some syslogds (Linux), you can add a - before the file name of step 292 #2 to have syslog write asynchronously for speed, like this: 293 294 news.* -/var/log/news.all 295 296 Again, there is a tab character between the columns here. 297 298 Some syslogds may complain about the asterisk in news.*. If yours does, 299 write news.debug instead of news.*. 300 301 ===== PROBLEMS 302 303 If you don't find information about your problem below, please see the FAQ. 304 305 ----- "fatal: libpcre.so.0: open failed: No such file or directory" 306 307 Add the path to your libpcre to LD_LIBRARY_PATH, for bash/ash/ksh/sh: 308 309 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib ; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH 310 311 (For csh/tcsh, go figure yourself. These shells are unsuitable for 312 anything, find the "csh programming considered harmful" article for 313 details. csh and tcsh are not supported by leafnode.) 314 315 You can make this change permanent with the crle(1) tool on some 316 systems. 317 318 ----- make distcheck fails 319 320 Currently, make distcheck requires that a valid "news" user exists in 321 the system. 322 323 ----- compiler warnings 324 325 Solaris 2.5 emits a lot of bogus warnings at compile time, complaining 326 about missing prototypes, for mkstemp, gethostname and snprintf; about 327 the scope of struct sockaddr_in. These warnings can safely be ignored. 328 329 ----- portability -- other build-time problems 330 331 leafnode cannot be tested on all possible systems. Report compile or 332 run-time portability problems to the leafnode mailing list. However, of 333 the free operating systems (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Linux), only 334 versions supported by the vendor are supported by leafnode. Hurd, 335 Windows and Solaris 1.x (SunOS 4.x) are unsupported, meaning that no 336 workarounds for these systems will be employed. CygWin and AmigaOS are 337 currently unsupported, but may be supported in the future. Feedback is 338 appreciated. 339 340 Bug and portability fixes for unsupported operating systems that don't 341 impair the performance on the supported systems will however be accepted 342 if sent. 343 344 ----- other problems 345 346 You also may want to consult the Mini-Leafsite-HOWTO by Florian Kuehnert 347 <sutok@gmx.de> which was unfortunately written for leafnode-1.4 and is 348 therefore somewhat out of date. It is available from the usual places 349 (sunsite and mirrors). 350 351 If you want to ask on Usenet about leafnode, look in the newsgroups 352 news.software.nntp for English language and de.comm.software.newsserver 353 for German-language. Do not crosspost! 354 355 ===== HACKING 356 357 Leafnode 1.X is in maintenance mode. No new features will be added. Only 358 major bugs will be fixed. Please file any feature requests against 359 leafnode 2.0beta. 360 361 Hackers, remember to ./configure --enable-maintainer-mode. 362 363 Cornelius Krasel <krasel@wpxx02.toxi.uni-wuerzburg.de> 364 Matthias Andree <matthias.andree@gmx.de> 365 366 vim:tw=76: