22.2. Installing the NNTP Server

The NNTP server (nntpd) may be compiled in two ways, depending on the expected load on the news system. There are no compiled versions available, because of some site-specific defaults that are hardcoded into the executable. All configuration is done through macros defined in common/conf.h.

nntpd may be configured as either a standalone server that is started at system boot time from an rc file, or a daemon managed by inetd. In the latter case, you have to have the following entry in /etc/inetd.conf:

nntp    stream  tcp nowait      news    /usr/etc/in.nntpd    nntpd

The inetd.conf syntax is described in detail in Chapter 12. If you configure nntpd as standalone, make sure that any such line in inetd.conf is commented out. In either case, you have to make sure the following line appears in /etc/services:

nntp    119/tcp   readnews untp    # Network News Transfer Protocol

To temporarily store any incoming articles, nntpd also needs a .tmp directory in your news spool. You should create it using the following commands:

# mkdir /var/spool/news/.tmp
# chown news.news /var/spool/news/.tmp