Linux Network Administrator's Guide, Second Edition

Installation

C News should be available in a prepackaged format for any modern Linux distribution, so installation will be easy. If not, or if you want to install from the original source distribution, then of course you can.^[126] No matter how you install it, you will need to edit the C News configuration files. Their formats are described in the following list:

sys

The sys file controls which newsgroups your site receives and forwards. We discuss it in detail in the following section.

active

Not usually edited by the administration; contains directions for handling articles in each newsgroup the site handles.

organization

This file should contain your organization’s name, for example, “Virtual Brewery, Inc.” On your home machine, enter “private site,” or anything else you like. Most people will not consider your site properly configured if you haven’t customized this file.

newsgroups

This file is a list of all newsgroups, with a one-line description of each one’s purpose. These descriptions are frequently used by your newsreader when displaying the list of all groups to which you are subscribed.

mailname

Your site’s mail name, e.g., vbrew.com.

whoami

Your site’s name for news purposes. Quite often, the UUCP site name is used, e.g., vbrew.

explist

You should probably edit this file to reflect your preferred expiration times for special newsgroups. Disk space may play an important role in your choices.

To create an initial hierarchy of newsgroups, obtain active and newsgroups ...