From: root@victrola.sea.wa.us (Vince Skahan) Subject: Linux UUCP/News/Mail Frequently Asked Questions Date: Sun, 4 Apr 1993 08:03:09 GMT
Last modified: March 31, 1993
Introduction
============
It seems that the same questions regarding the design philosophy and the
care-and-feeding of uucp, mail, and news software keep coming up as people
join the list of Linux users who want to get their systems attached to
Internet or USENET.
The intent of this document is to answer some of the questions and comments
that appear to meet the definition of 'frequently asked questions' regarding
uucp, mail, and news software and Linux in general (and the versions in the
SLS distribution in particular).
Comments, corrections, and suggestions (via e-mail only) are welcomed...
Caveats
=======
Please do not even bother to try to become a *nix USENET site unless you're
willing to try to learn a lot. It's not trivial if you're not willing to
make the effort. If you spend that time at the beginning, you can run
a full-fledged site with almost no sustaining labor required.
For what it's worth, I recommend that all USENET admins:
1. read the news.admin hierarchy and news.answers.
2. learn what's in the 'how to find sources' FAQ and how
to get sources, files, and FAQs via e-mail, uucp, and ftp
3. lean on your more experienced uucp neighbors to help you
4. participate in the news.* hierarchy and the comp.mail.*
hierarchy on USENET. Just reading them will eliminate
most of the frequently-asked-questions you'll come up with.
5. buy 'Zen and the Art of Internet' and/or the 'Whole Internet Guide'
from a local technical bookstore so you learn what you're
connecting to.
6. buy 'Managing UUCP and USENET', which is, in my opinion, the
best book out there for figuring out the programs and
protocols involved in being a USENET site.
7. read 'How to Become a USENET Site' in news.answers before you
go to the trouble of becoming one.
8. realize that you'll be lost at the beginning and don't let it
bother you.
Please don't expect the care and feeding of USENET uucp, news, and mail to
be spoon-fed to you. It won't happen. You'll need to spend time learning.
You should probably spend money buying some of the fine books out there for
the reading. Please don't think that this is Prodigy or something where
somebody gives you preset software and a phone number and you're online.
Software currently known to work with Linux
===========================================
SLS currently contains the following:
UUCP - Taylor UUCP 1.04
News transport - Cnews 12/22/91 patchdate (no 'optional' speedup patches)
News readers - tin-1.1r9, trn-2.5, nn-6.4.18
Mail transport - smail3.1.28 with uucp and smtp support built-in
Mail program - elm2.4.21 with domainized headers built-in
Other software known to work under Linux, but not currently available in
the SLS distribution:
nntp - nntp 1.5.11 'reference' release
nntp readers - tin-1.1p9 at least, maybe trn/waffle/nn also
inn - INN v1.4 with some editing required
Cnews - current patchdate 'performance' release (with patching)
mail transport - sendmail5.65c+IDA
Paths used
==========
1. I don't like the paths you used. What can I do about it ?
The paths in the SLS distribution are the 'SLS standards', which
means that some people like them, some people don't.
It's your system. You can do anything you want with it if you're
willing to spend the time to learn how to do so...
Get the sources and set them to whatever you'd like. Using a binary
editor to set the pathnames is *NOT* recommended since there are paths
in many binaries, config files, and shell scripts. It's unlikely that
you'll find them all.
UUCP
=====
1. Why is SLS uucp configured in HoneyDanBer mode rather than 'Taylor' mode?
Because IMHO it's the de-facto standard UUCP implementation at
this time. There are thousands of sites with experienced admins
and there are many places you can get incredibly good information
concerning the HDB setup that include:
- many, many vendors' networking and uucp docs
- the normal *nix magazines and periodicals
- the fine (!) O'Reilly and Associates handbooks
2. But I want Taylor mode, dammit!
The uucp1.04 that's supposed to be in SLS real-soon-now has
all three modes of config files built in. While I can't test it,
I did 'rtfm' and Ian Taylor tells me that what I did should work.
Please let me know...
The search order for config files is Taylor...then V2 (L.sys)...
then HDB. Use the uuconv utility in /usr/lib/uucp to convert
config files from one mode to another.
3. Why do I get 'timeout' on connections when I upgraded to uucp-1.04 ?
If you use a 'Direct' device in the Devices file, there's now a
10 second timeout compiled in. Make the name of the Device anything
other than 'Direct'.
4. Sample config files
Working HDB mode config files for kernels of 0.99-4 and before
are in the SLS distribution.
[...anybody want to kick me vanilla HDB, Taylor, and L.sys style
config files for a 'normal' modem calling a 'normal' system
please feel free to do so...]
Newsreaders
===========
1. trn - why do I get the message 'dbinit failed' ?
Because you didn't run mthreads from cron to keep the threads
database up-to-date. This will be a non-issue when trn3.0 comes out.
2. nn - why is my database getting continuously corrupted ?
If you built it from sources and you asked for the 'words' method
of building the database, it will definitely get corrupted if your
filesystem doesn't handle long filenames (ie...comp.os.linux.announce
is more than 14-characters). Build it with the 'by-number' way of
creating the database and you'll be fine.
3. I can't post to moderated groups, why ?
Probably because the newsreader is trying to call /bin/mail to send
the mail and it doesn't like it. I linked mine to 'elm' and it
works ok here. (sure wish we had a 'real bsd-like /bin/mail'
for Linux).
Another possibility is that you have a moderated newsgroup set up
on your local system as not-moderated and somebody upstream is
quietly deleting the article (some system's software, not a person).
Make sure you run a 'checkgroups' every now and then when the
checkgroups article rolls by in news.admin every few weeks.
News