LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Objective 4: Serving News

Knowledge about how to configure a news server is required for the LPI Level 2 Exams. However, news servers receive even less emphasis than mailing lists. The LPI specifically mentions the InterNet News service (INN), which is offered by the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) at http://www.isc.org. INN is currently in its second version, INN 2. Following is the essential information you need to know about this topic.

Overview

The INN daemon uses the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), which operates on TCP port 143 by default. The protocol was first outlined in RFC 977. The name of the INN program that serves news is innd, the INN daemon. You can read more about INN at http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/sw/inn.

News servers can operate locally, meaning that they can provide access to messages posted by users on the LAN. It is also possible to connect an NNTP server to a newsfeed, which makes it possible for the server to receive messages from all of the Usenet newsgroups on the Internet. Thousands of newsgroups exist. They are organized hierarchically. Top-level discussion categories include:

alt

By far the largest group, which includes an extremely wide variety of topics, from alt.fan.letterman to alt.os.linux to alt.music.led-zeppelin.

comp

This category includes such computing-related groups as comp.lang.c, comp.lang.java, and comp.software.testing. The comp.os.linux series of groups is especially relevant to readers of this book.

humanities

Groups in this ...