Very newbie questions.

[Kevin McKinnon]

> Is there a web site for a very newbie setting up a news server using INN
> 2.2.2?

Hi Erin,

Best bet is to follow through INNs INSTALL file, which covers getting 
copies of the current active file  
(ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG/)
and how to create the history files.  The INSTALL file came with your 
source code distribution.

> I know I need to pull in the news groups, but how do I go about this?

Normally, news is pushed from an upstream server, typically your 
backbone provider if you're an ISP, or your ISP if you're an end-user.

The other alternative is to use a program like 'suck' to pull the 
news off of your ISP's server.

> What files do I make a cron job for? Where to I tell it what groups to bring
> in?

If you're getting a push feed, the groups are specified at the far 
end.  You'll tell your peers which groups you want fed to your server.

The cron information is in the INSTALL file too.  The only mandatory 
entry is the one that calls news.daily

> Am I even going about this the right way?

You're on the right track, and asking in the right place.  The 
biggest thing that will help is following that INSTALL file.

If you installed INN from a pre-packaged binary build, you might want 
to seriously consider grabbing the current sources from ISC's ftp 
server.

INN 2.2.2:
ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/inn/snapshots/inn-STABLE-20000425.tar.gz

or

INN 2.3:
ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/inn/snapshots/inn-CURRENT-20000425.tar.gz

Cheers,
Kev

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Kevin McKinnon, Sr. News Administrator              news at sunshinecable.com
Sunshine Communications Cable Internet       http://news.sunshinecable.com
[cronkite.sunshinecable.com  INN2.3  Incoming Curr: 9.8Mbps,Peak:17.5Mbps]