INN 2.4 Documentation

This documentation is from the old INN 2.4 branch and should be the most accurate information for all releases of INN 2.4, but it is only guaranteed to reflect the INN 2.4.6 release. This branch is no longer under active development.

Available from this page is all the documentation that was converted to POD at the time of INN 2.4.6. Much was only available in nroff format. More extensive documentation can be obtained by downloading the INN 2.4 distribution.

Basic documentation:

• README
• INSTALL
• Changes and upgrade information
• License information
• Contributors and credits
• Installation checklist (preliminary)

Documentation for developers:

• HACKING
• TODO
• Configuration parser design, semantics, and syntax

Filtering and authentication hook documentation:

• nnrpd external authentication hooks
• Perl hooks
• Python hooks

Configuration files:

• control.ctl — Specify handling of Usenet control messages
• cycbuff.conf — Configuration for the CNFS storage backend
• distrib.pats — Default values for the Distribution header
• expire.ctl — Configuration file for article expiration
• inn.conf — Basic configuration data for INN programs
• motd.news — Message of the day information for readers
• newsfeeds — Determine where Usenet articles are sent
• passwd.nntp — Passwords for connecting to remote NNTP servers
• radius.conf — Configuration for nnrpd RADIUS authenticator
• readers.conf — Access control and configuration for nnrpd
• sasl.conf — SASL configuration for nnrpd
• subscriptions — Default recommended subscribed groups

Primary daemons and utilities to start them:

• innd — Core daemon for accepting and storing articles
• inndstart — Bind to appropriate ports and start innd
• nnrpd — NNTP reader server
• rc.news — Start or stop INN daemons

Data files:

• active — List of newsgroups carried by the server
• active.times — List of local creation times of newsgroups

Outgoing feeds:

• send-uucp — Send Usenet articles via UUCP

Article posting utilities:

• inews — Post an article to the local news server
• mailpost — Feed an e-mail message into a newsgroup
• pullnews — Pull news from one news server and feed it to another

Overview method documentation:

• OVDB

User utilities:

• convdate — Convert time and date strings and numbers
• fastrm — Quickly remove a list of files
• grephistory — Query the INN history database
• innconfval — Get configuration parameters from inn.conf
• inndf — Report free disk, inodes, and overview space
• innupgrade — Upgrade INN configuration files
• simpleftp — Rudimentary FTP client
• sm — Command-line interface to the INN storage manager

Expiration and maintenance utilities:

• expireover — Perform all overview-driven expiration
• makehistory — Rebuild the history and overview databases

Special article processing:

• ninpaths — Report Usenet Path statistics

Support utilities:

• innmail — Simple mail sending program
• perl-nocem — NoCeM-on-spool implementation
• pgpverify — Cryptographically verify Usenet control messages
• sendinpaths — Send Usenet Path statistics via e-mail

Authentication programs:

• auth_krb5 — nnrpd Kerberos v5 authenticator
• auth_smb — nnrpd SMB authenticator
• ckpasswd — nnrpd password authenticator
• domain — nnrpd domain resolver
• ident — nnrpd ident resolver
• radius — nnrpd RADIUS password authenticator

OVDB overview support utilities:

• ovdb_init — Prepare OVDB database for use
• ovdb_monitor — Periodic OVDB database maintenance
• ovdb_server — OVDB overview helper server
• ovdb_stat — Display information from the OVDB database

Tradindexed overview support utilities:

• tdx-util — Tradindexed overview manipulation utility

Support library documentation:

• nnrpd resolver and authenticator library
• History library and API
• Linked list library
• QIO quick I/O library
• Ternary search trie library
• Unicode-aware wildmat library

Contributed software:

• thdexpire — Dynamic expire daemon for timehash and timecaf storage
• tunefeed — Build a newsgroups pattern for a remote feed