Why don't I get any news?

[DavSmith at esoc.esa.de]

Folks,

I'm new to this business of setting up a news server, and to INN, but not to
Unix. I've built and installed Inn 2.2.3 on Solaris 2.6. I'm intending to use
CNFS to store the news. This is only a small server, with one reader, intended
basically for me to work out procedures for supporting our main news readers.

I thought I'd got it working, but found yesterday that I'd got storageapi set to
"false" in inn.conf. I stopped innd, corrected that, and restarted innd (using
rc.news).

Now I don't get any news at all and when I look at the system log I see masses
of messages saying:

innd: SERVER can't store article: no matching entry in storage.conf.

Here's my storage.conf:

# This file is used to determine which storage method articles are sent to
# to be stored and which storage class they are stored as.

#
# Sample for the ``timehash'' storage method:
#
# method <methodname> {
#      newsgroups: <wildmat>
#      class: <storage class #>
#      size: <minsize>[,<maxsize>]
#      expires: <mintime>[,<maxtime>]
#      options: <options>
# }
#
#method timehash {
# newsgroups: *
# class: 0
#}
#method timehash {
# newsgroups: alt.binaries.*
# class: 1
# size: 2,32000
#}
#method timehash {
# newsgroups: alt.*
# class: 2
# size: 1
#}

#
# Sample for the ``cnfs'' storage method:
#
# methodname:wildmat:storage class #:minsize:maxsize:metacycbuffname
# method cnfs {
#      newsgroups: <wildmat>
#      class: <storage class #>
#      size: <minsize>[,<maxsize>]
#      expires: <mintime>[,<maxtime>]
#      options: <metacycbuffname>
# }
#
method cnfs {
  newsgroups: alt.*,control.cancel
  class: 1
  size: 0,3999
  expires: 4d1s
  options: ALTERNATE
}
method cnfs {
  newsgroups: comp.*,rec.*
  class: 2
  size: 0,3999
  expires: 4d1s
  options: REMAINDER
}
#method cnfs {
# newsgroups: *
# class: 3
# size: 4000,1000000
# options: BIGAREA
#}


And the relevant stanza from newsfeeds on the system that provides my feed:

cs71/cs71.esoc.esa.de\
              :alt.*,rec.*,comp.*\
              :Tf,Wnm:

And here's my newsfeeds:

##  $Revision: 1.3.2.3 $
##  newsfeeds - determine where Usenet articles get sent
##
##  This file is complicated -- see newsfeeds.5!

##  This is the local site.
##  The "pattern" field gives the initial subscription list for
##  all other sites.  You might want to put "!control,!junk,!<local>.*"
##  there.  The "distrib" subfield limits incoming articles.
##

## Default of  everything to everybody except for junk, control, anything
## with "local" as the newsgroup prefix (i.e. matches "localhost.stuff") or
## groups under foo. Articles posted to any group under alt.binaries.warez
## will not get propagated, even if they're cross posted to something that
## is.
ME\
  :*, at alt.binaries.warez.*,!junk,!control*,!local*,!foo.*,!*.jobs*\
       /world,usa,na,gnu,bionet,pubnet,u3b,eunet,vmsnet,inet,ddn,k12\
  ::

## Create the links for cross posted articles
## If you use this you MUST add -L option to innflags in inn.conf.
## see innd(8)
crosspost:*:Tc,Ap,WR:/usr/local/news/bin/crosspost

# Feed all moderated source postings to an archiver
#source-archive!:!*,*sources*,!*wanted*,!*.d\
# :Tc,Wn:/usr/local/news/bin/archive -f -i /usr/local/news/spool/archive/INDEX

##  News overview
# use this flag if storage api is used
overview!:*:Tc,Ao,WhR,S30000:/usr/local/news/bin/overchan
# else
#overview!:*:Tc,WO,S30000:/usr/local/news/bin/overchan

# Feed all local non-internal postings to nearnet; sent off-line via
# nntpsend or send-nntp.
#nic.near.net\
# :!junk/!foo\
# :Tf,Wnm:nic.near.net

# A real-time nntplink feed
# If you turn on storageapi, you cannot to use nntplink since it cannot handle
# token.
#uunet\
# :/!foo\
# :Tc,Wnm:/usr/local/news/bin/nntplink -i stdin news.uu.net

# Capture all Foo, Incorporated, postings
#capture\
# :*/foo\
# :Tp,H2:/usr/local/news/bin/capture %s

# A UUCP feed, where we try to keep the "batching" between 4 and 1K.
#ihnp4\
# :!junk,!control/!foo\
# :Tf,Wnb,B4096/1024:

# Innfeed funnel master; individual peers feed into the funnel.
# Note that innfeed with "-y" and no peer in innfeed.conf
# would cause a problem that innfeed drops the first article.
innfeed!:\
  !*,\
  :Tc,Wnm*,S30000:/usr/local/news/bin/startinnfeed

# A real-time feed through innfeed.
#news.uu.net/uunet\
# :!junk,!control/!foo\
# :Tm:innfeed!

# Use an external program to handle control messages, except cancel
controlchan!\
  :!*,control,control.*,!control.cancel\
  :Tc,Wnsm:/usr/local/news/bin/controlchan

# news to mail gateway
#n2m!:!*:Tc,Ac,Wn*:/usr/local/news/bin/news2mail
#news-software at localhost.our.domain.com:rec.pets.redants.*:Tm:n2m!

Any and all help very gratefully received.

Dave Smith
--
David O Smith
Somerford Consultancy Ltd.