Approving messages on moderate newsgroups

[Russ Allbery]

Catalin Braica <catalin at edulib.ro> writes:

> I just installed inn2.2.1 on a linux machine.  I want to have only some
> local groups, not to fetch groups from another server.  Then, I want to
> have 2 groups with read/post allowed from everywhere, and a third group
> (announcement) readable by everyone, but with posting allowed from only
> some hosts.

> Is this possible ? I look into the code, and it seems not possible.
> (if it is, please give me an example of a nnrp.access file)

You can't do this easily in INN 2.2.  It's possible in INN 2.3 using
readers.conf.

> Anyway, a workaround for this was to make that group moderated, so only
> allowed messages will get posted.

> Ok, I did that, and when someone posts a message it gets mailed to
> moderator.

> I guess that after that, the moderator should use inews to approve the
> message, but isn't there another way ?

Not really.  You can write a script to automate the procedure, of course
(and most moderators do).

> I also looked a bit into the code (grep) and saw that HDR(_approved)
> gets set only in inews, and doesn't check for the moderator email to see
> it is ok, or some sort of authentication that the message was really
> approved.

Yup, known large design flaw in how Usenet works.  Fixing it is hard, and
it's not specific to INN.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>