INN testing news server

[Julien ÉLIE]

En réponse à Jeffrey M. Vinocur :
> I guess we could try setting one up if you wanted.  I'd need a pointer to
> some basics about UUCP over IP though.


I think we can use send-uucp(8).  According to its man page, we only
have to put a <pathetc>/send-uucp.cf with a line like:

    zoetermeer      gzip            1048576         5,18,22

And in the newsfeeds file:

   zoetermeer\
        :groups-to-exchange\
        :Tf,Wnb,B4096/1024:

Perhaps we could have several lines in send-uucp.cf to better test it
(with bzip2, compress, none, gzip_-7, etc.) at different hours.
No need to have several newsfeeds entries to do that.


There will also be a cron to set.  For instance:

    22 *   * * *   news    send-uucp


I see that send-uucp uses batcher to prepare the batches.  There is
nothing to configure there.  And they are sent by uux.


Well, I see that uux is used to send the batches.
You will have to install it (it is in <http://packages.debian.org/etch/uucp>
if you search for it on Debian).
And I see that uustat is in that package too -- you will have to modify two
lines in your send-uucp script to put the right path to uustat in case
you do not use the last CURRENT release.


After a quick glance at uux, I see that it queues articles and commands
to execute in the uucp spool.  A communication should then be initiated
by uucico to process the queue; uucico uses TCP port 540 and should be
started by cron; rnews is then used to inject the articles.

Useful pointers are:

    http://www.faqs.org/docs/linux_network/x-087-2-uucp.html
    http://doc.novsu.ac.ru/oreilly/tcpip/puis/ch15_01.htm

I have not yet read them all.
There are security issues to check (although it seems that only
certain commands are allowed by default [rnews, rmail] and directories).

As there are exchanges user & password, perhaps you will want UUCP/SSL?
(with a stunnel)  But it is perhaps not necessary if we use proper
UUCP options (check the host and the call sequence number).

I am not sure whether we should use a master and a slave UUCP server
(configured by cron or by (x)inetd).  Indeed, a bidirectional feed
will also need the master to send its batches after having received
the ones from the slave (but uuxqt seems to then close the connection
after a change of role).

Well, I have not tested; but we shall manage to make it work :)

-- 
Julien ÉLIE

« Ta remise sur pied lui a fait perdre la tête ! » (Astérix)