Some questions from a new user

Scott Ream inn at 9370.org
Fri Jun 28 05:58:11 UTC 2002


I've been monitoring this list for a bit and feel comfortable asking some
beginner level questions.  I have read a lot of the documentation but since
I have some specific questions I also included some answered (somewhat) in
the docs.  Some of the links on the faqs and webpages are now dead.  Once I
get everything setup I plan on writing some documentation and putting it on
my site.  My main interest is in some of the authentication methods used by
INN and I will include some questions on that also.  And yes, I know, RTFM.

I am currently running a trial of dnews 5.6a3 on an AthlonXP1700+ 392MB ram
running Win2000Pro.  On this setup I am mirroring a couple of low traffic
groups from news.securecomp.org, specifically the securecomp and weboftrust
groups.  I have also set up two local groups.  The mirrored groups are read
only for now.  Using tcpview I notice anywhere from 2 to 10 people connected
at any given time.  Cpu and memory usage are negligible and I have had no
problems.

I am picking up some free PI and PII boxes this week and would like to
switch to INN on OpenBSD 3.1 on one of them.  I was thinking of using a
PII266Mhz w/128MB ram.  On this machine I may also put a
smtp/pop/imap/webmail setup that would also have very low traffic.  My
questions thus far are:

1)  Are there any issues with INN on OpenBSD?  I didn't find any on google
but I thought it was a good idea to ask.

2)  Is my proposed hardware setup sufficient?  Judging by the numbers I'm
getting with my current setup I assume that it is.  Hardware cost is not
much of a concern but I might as well use what I'm getting for free if it
will work.

If the above will work then here is my plan (please excuse me if I use
incorrect terminology):

1)  Setup INN with the same groups as on the dnews box

2)  Getnews for securecomp groups from securecomp server and local groups
from my local dnews server

3)  Test it locally to make sure it is working

4)  Change the rdr in my nat router from the dnews box to the inn box

Will the above work?  Will it be transparent to a users newsreader or will
they have delete and then add the server in their reader?

After I get this setup I would like to 'peer' with the securecomp server for
the two groups I will be mirroring. What I mean by this is that I will make
the securecomp groups postable and then my news server will feed to their
news server.  Are there any issues with this?

As I said above, I am very interested in the authorization mechanisms used
by INN.  I have read about using PGP signatures to post to a control group
and I assume that you can set up PGP sig verification to post to any group.
I am curious about x509 signatures as well.  I seem to remember that
Collabra could do this.  Are there any implementations using x509 certs and
INN?  I would be primarily interested in testing these against a private CA
we are setting up.

Sorry if some of these questions are too basic but I really don't know too
much about it (yet)>

Scott C Ream
sream at 9370.org
PGP Key ID  0xA76DAA1B68DEEAF6
X509 Key ID 0x9B03A7E0294E6171




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