Linux Network Administrator's Guide, Second Edition

The sys File

The sys file, located in /etc/news, controls which hierarchies you receive and forward to other sites. Although there are maintenance tools named addfeed and delfeed, we think it’s better to maintain this file by hand.

The sys file contains entries for each site to which you forward news, as well as a description of the groups you will accept. The first line is a ME entry that describes your system. It’s a safe bet to use the following:

ME:all/all::

You also have to add a line for each site to which you feed news. Each line looks like this:

               site[/exclusions]:grouplist[/distlist][:flags[:cmds]]

Entries may be continued across newlines using a backslash (\) at the end of the line to be continued. A hash sign (#) denotes a comment.

site

This is the name of the site the entry applies to. One usually chooses the site’s UUCP name for this. There has to be an entry for your site in the sys file too, or you will not receive any articles yourself.

The special site name ME denotes your site. The ME entry defines all groups you are willing to store locally. Articles that aren’t matched by the ME line will go to the junk group.

C News rejects any articles that have already passed through this site to prevent loops. C News does this by ensuring that the local site name does not appear in the Path: of the article. Some sites may be known by a number of valid names. For example, some sites use their fully qualified domain name in this field, or an alias like news. site.domain ...