Simple web server - This is a sample nntp_access file: # #
This is a sample nntp_access file: # # by default, anyone may transfer news, but not read or post default xfer no # # public.vbrew.com offers public access via modem. We allow # them to read and post to any but the local.* groups public.vbrew.com read post !local # # all other hosts at the brewery may read and post *.vbrew.com read post NNTP Authorization The nntpd daemon provides a simple authorization scheme. If you capitalize any of the access tokens in the nntp_access file, nntpd requires authorization from the client for the respective operation. For instance, when specifying a permission of Xfer or XFER, (as opposed to xfer), nntpd will not let the client transfer articles to your site unless it passes authorization. The authorization procedure is implemented by means of a new NNTP command named AUTHINFO. Using this command, the client transmits a username and a password to the NNTP server. nntpd validates them by checking them against the /etc/passwd database and verifies that the user belongs to the nntp group. The current implementation of NNTP authorization is only experimental and has therefore not been implemented very portably. The result of this is that it works only with plain-style password databases; shadow passwords are not recognized. If you are compiling from source and have the PAM package installed, the password check is fairly simple to change. nntpd Interaction with C News When nntpd receives an article, it has to deliver it to the news subsystem. Depending on whether it was received as a result of an IHAVEor POST command, the article is handed to rnewsor inews, respectively. Instead of invoking rnews, you may also configure it (at compile time), to batch the incoming articles and move the resulting batches to /var/spool/news/in.coming, where they are left for relaynews to pick them up at the next queue run. nntpd has to have access to the history file to be able to properly perform the ihave/sendme protocol. At compile time, you have to make sure the path to that file is set correctly. If you use C News, make sure that C News and nntpd agree on the format of your history file. C News uses dbm hashing functions to access it; however, there are quite a number of different and slightly incompatible implementations of the dbm library. If C News has been linked with a different dbm library than you have in your standard libc, you have to link nntpd with this library, too. nntpd and C news disagreement sometimes produces error messages in the system log that nntpd can not open it properly, or you might see duplicate articles being received via NNTP. A good test of a malfunctioning news transfer is to pick an article from your spool area, telnet to the nntp port, and offer it to nntpd as shown in the next example. Of course, you have to replace msg@id with the message ID of the article you want to feed to nntpd: $ telnet localhost nntp Trying 127.0.0.1… Connected to localhost Escape characters is ‘^ ]’. 201 vstout NNTP[auth] server version 1.5.11t (16 November 1991) ready at Sun Feb 6 16:02:32 1194 (no posting) IHAVE msg@id435 Got it. QUIT