News Leafsite mini-HOWTO
 Florian Kuehnert, [email protected]
 v0.3, 4 January 1998

 This HOWTO will help you to configure a small leafsite for Usenet News
 using the free software package Leafnode. For any questions, sugges
 tions and comments, please write to Florian Kuehnert ([email protected]).
 Please send any bugs you found in this document to me as well. (C)
 1998 by Florian Kuehnert.

 1.  Why to use Leafnode?

 In normal cases if you want to read news offline on your local
 computer you have to install a news server software like INN or CNews.
 Also you are in the need for an nntp or uucp connection to your
 newsfeed.  In fact that such packages contain much more features than
 you need, you run better by installing Leafnode.

 Leafnode is much simpler to use and very small but there are some
 disadvantages: Leafnode is slow and loses news in about any error
 situation. That's why you shouldn't use it for a big news server,
 nevertheless, its appropriate for private users who dont want spend
 much time configuring INN.

 2.  Where to get Leafnode?

 Leafnode is available at ftp://ftp.troll.no/pub/freebies/
 <ftp://ftp.troll.no/pub/freebies/> and has been developed by Arnt
 Gulbrandsen, an employee of Troll Tech AS. The recent version is 1.4
 and in some distributions (for example Debian), Leafnode is included.
 However, be sure to use at least version 1.4 as several critical bugs
 were fixed.

 3.  How do I install it?

 A small installation help comes with the package, but let's do it
 together :-) -- If Leafnode >=1.4 is shipped with your distribution,
 it would be the wisest to use the pre-compiled version and leave out
 the steps 1 to 4.

 1.) Be sure that there is no other news server running on your
 computer. When you type
 $ telnet localhost nntp
 you should get an error message. If you get a connection get back to
 the prompt of your shell, you should uninstall INN, CNews or whatever
 you're running now and comment out the nntp-line in your
 /etc/inetd.conf.

 2.) Make sure that there is a user called "news", check in
 /etc/password for the name. If there isn't, create one (either typing
 $ adduser news
 or using a tool shipped with your distribution).

 3.) Unpack the sources:
 $ tar xfz leafnode-1.4.tar.gz
 and change into the source directory
 $ cd leafnode-1.4

 4.) Compile the program and install it
 $ make; make install
 5.) Edit /usr/lib/leafnode/config (it may be on any other place like
 /etc/leafnode when you use a pre-compiled version of your Linux
 distribution). The line "server =" should point to the news server of
 your ISP.

 6.) Edit /etc/nntpserver. It should include your local hostname
 (localhost or whatever your computer name is, the command hostname
 should help you). If in some startup file like /etc/profile or
 /.bash_profile the environment variable is defined, you should adjust
 to your computers name as well.

 7.) Edit the /etc/inetd.conf: Make sure that there is no line
 beginning with "nntp". If there is such a line, comment it out putting
 a "#" before it. Then add the following line:
 nntp    stream  tcp     nowait  news    /usr/sbin/tcpd
 /usr/local/sbin/leafnode
 When someone (for example you :-) connects to your computer on the
 NNTP port, leafnode is started as server process.

 8.) Go online and run the program "fetch" as root or news. The first
 time fetch is started, it will download a list of your ISP's
 newsgroups. This may take some time depending on the speed on your
 connection and the number of groups your ISP has in its active-File.

 9.) Start your favorite newsreader (slrn, (r)tin and knews are not a
 bad start) and subscribe to all your groups you read. Be careful not
 just to subscribe these groups, but also to enter them, even when
 they're empty.

 10.) Start fetch again to download all the news of the groups want to
 get.

 4.  How do I maintain leafnode?

 Now you have got a working news system up and running, but there are
 still some things to do. You may edit the file
 /usr/lib/leafnode/config to set the expire dates of your groups. This
 number means, when old messages should be deleted. The standard time
 of 20 days is much often too long if you read some groups with much
 traffic, 4 days or a week are in most cases a good time for your
 system. You may change the value for all groups ("expire = n" to hold
 all groups n days), but you tell leafnode to change this time for some
 separate groups writing
 groupexpire foo.bar n
 to set the expire time for the group foo.bar to n days.

 This setting alone won't make leafnode deleting old messages, a
 separate program is responsible for this: texpire. It may be started
 as a cron job or by command line. If your computer is up all the time,
 you may want to add the following line to news' crontab file (to edit
 it, log in as news and type "crontab -e" or as type root "crontab -u
 news -e"):
 0 19 * * * /usr/local/sbin/texpire
 This line causes the cron daemon to star texpire every day at 19:00.
 Check the crontab manual page for further adjustment. If your computer
 is not regularly switched on, you may start texpire just from time to
 time, when you notice that fetch gets slower. It works fine as with
 the "cron-method".

 5.  How does it work?

 Leafnode is a "real" NNTP server, which means that you can also login
 from a different computer (via Internet, the local network etc.).
 Every time you enter a group in your newsreader, your reader sends the
 information to leafnode and requests it. If the group does not exist,
 leafnode will create an empty file /var/spool/news/interesting.groups,
 named like the group. When you run fetch the next time, it will fetch
 the messages of the group. If a newsgroup has not been visited for a
 certain time, leafnode will stop to fetch its articles and delete its
 name in /var/spool/news/interesting.groups. So if you just subscribed
 to a high traffic newsgroup by accident, you may delete its file there
 by hand for that you won't have to download all the postings there for
 the next week.

 A week is not enough for you? You want to go on holiday for three
 weeks and still get news? Unfortunately, there is no option in
 leafnode to change it. But you can edit the file leafnode.h and
 recompile it. The #defined constants are TIMEOUT_LONG and
 TIMEOUT_SHORT, just set the time in seconds up. Another, simpler
 solution is to define a cron-job that does "touch
 /var/spool/news/interesting.groups/*" every night.

 If you want to get a list of all avaible groups, look into the file
 /usr/lib/leafnode/groupinfo, where you will find a short description
 on the group.

 If you want to re-read the list of newsgroups from your newsfeed (for
 example when you want to read a new group), just delete the file
 /var/spool/news/active.read. Fetch will create it the next time and
 get the new list. Fetch will also re-read the grouplist from time to
 time, so you don't have to do it by hand.

 6.  What newsreader should I use?

 There is not *the* newsreader for Linux, like there is not *the*
 editor. My favourite newsreader is emacs in gnus mode which is the
 most configurable reader for Linux. Many people are using slrn and tin
 on a terminal, many people use knews under X. There are also trn, nn
 and a lot more reader, so just try what you like. The only reader you
 shouldn't use is Netscape, it is big, feature-less, unstable, and it
 creates sometimes broken postings. However, it is your personal
 decision.

 Anyway, knews is no bad idea for your first experiences as it is very
 user-friendly and easy to understand.

 7.  Where do I get more information?

 Some documentation is provided with the Leafnode package (read the
 files INSTALL and README, the sources are also quite interesting). If
 you want to know more about "professional" and "big" news servers,
 check the INN FAQ (they are provided with the INN package). To get
 information about your newsreader, type man "name of your newsreader"
 or check for other files in /usr/doc.

 If you have any questions concerning the news system, just ask in an
 appropriate newsgroup (look in the news.software.ALL hierarchy).

 If you have any question, comments or corrections concerning this
 HOWTO, just write to me ([email protected]).

 8.  Thanks

 I would like to thank Michael Schulz ([email protected]) for
 his help concerning some language problems and Cornelius Krasel
 ([email protected]) for his "touch *"-trick.

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