Current INN Documentation

This documentation is from the current Subversion head of INN development, not for the latest INN release. It is therefore intended primarily for INN developers and users who are tracking CURRENT snapshots, and to test the HTML conversion of the documentation. Be warned that it may be incorrect for STABLE snapshots or a released version and be careful about relying on it.

Available from this page is all the documentation that has been converted to POD, but not yet all of INN's documentation. Some is still only available in nroff format. Help in translating documentation into POD is gratefully accepted.

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:

• buffindexed.conf — Configuration for the buffindexed overview method (example)
• control.ctl — Specify handling of Usenet control messages (example)
• cycbuff.conf — Configuration for the CNFS storage backend (example)
• distrib.pats — Default values for the Distribution: header (example)
• distributions — Recommended values for the Distribution: header (example)
• expire.ctl — Configuration file for article expiration (example)
• incoming.conf — Configuration of incoming news feeds (example)
• inn.conf — Basic configuration data for INN programs (example)
• moderators — Submission addresses for moderated groups (example)
• motd.news — Message of the day information for readers (example)
• newsfeeds — Determine where Usenet articles are sent (example)
• passwd.nntp — Passwords for connecting to remote NNTP servers (example)
• radius.conf — Configuration for nnrpd RADIUS authenticator (example)
• readers.conf — Access control and configuration for nnrpd (example)
• storage.conf — Configuration file for storage manager (example)
• subscriptions — Default recommended subscribed groups (example)

Primary daemons and utilities to start them:

• ctlinnd — Control the main INN daemon
• innd — Core daemon for accepting and storing articles
• nnrpd — NNTP reader server
• rc.news — Start or stop INN daemons
• tinyleaf — Very simple IHAVE-only NNTP server

Data files:

• active — List of newsgroups carried by the server (example)
• active.times — List of local creation times of newsgroups
• newsgroups — List of newsgroups and their short descriptions (example)
• newslog — Description of INN log files

Outgoing feeds:

• batcher — Prepare UUCP batches
• buffchan — Buffered backend for generating batch files
• 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 news servers and feed it to another
• rnews — Inject individual articles and UUCP batches

Overview method documentation:

• OVDB

User utilities:

• convdate — Convert time and date strings and numbers
• fastrm — Quickly remove a list of files
• getlist — Get a list from an NNTP server
• 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
• mod-active — Batch processing of newsgroup changes
• 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
• news.daily — Perform daily Usenet maintenance tasks
• scanlogs — Summarize and rotate INN log files
• tally.control — Keep track of newsgroup creations and deletions

Special article processing:

• archive — Save articles to a local archive
• docheckgroups — Process checkgroups and output a list of changes
• news2mail — Channel script to gateway news into e-mails
• ninpaths — Report Usenet Path: statistics
• overchan — Batch update the overview database

Support utilities:

• actsync — Synchronize the active file with an external source
• innbind — Helper program to bind sockets to privileged ports
• 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
• shlock — Create lock files for use in shell scripts

Authentication programs:

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

CNFS storage support utilities:

• cnfsheadconf — Read and write CNFS headers
• cnfsstat — Show usage of CNFS buffers

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

Perl support:

• Export all variables an INN Perl script might need