Re: Reading news offline
On Tue, 5 Nov 1996, Johann Spies wrote:
> Date: Tue, 5 Nov 96 15:35 SAT
> From: Johann Spies <jhspies@ilink.nis.za>
> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Reading news offline
> Resent-Date: Tue, 5 Nov 1996 11:40:15 -0500 (EST)
> Resent-From: debian-user@lists.debian.org
>
> I have a dial-up connection to my ISP.
>
> I want to be able to read the usergroups offline. I have downloaded suck,
> inn and inews and also trn. After I have read their documentation and
> also the News-HOWTO, I still do not know how to do it.
Actually, for a small newsfeed I prefer CNews with the nntp package to
inn (but that's a personal preference). If you have inn up and running
properly, don't bother changing it.
> I can read news with trn and gnus, but only while I am connected to the ISP.
Have you installed and configured your news server properly. ie. While
connected to your isp, are you connecting with the isp's news server or
your own? You can find this out by running the netstat command to see
which news server you are connected to. For example, I am currently
reading news on my system using tin and downloading newsbatches from my
isp using suck. Here's the (partial) output of the netstat command:
$ netstat
Active Internet connections (w/o servers)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State
tcp 0 0 xwing.xwing.org:nntp xwing.xwing.org:1649 ESTABLISHED
tcp 0 0 xwing.xwing.org:1649 xwing.xwing.org:nntp ESTABLISHED
tcp 0 0 p2.radium.sentex.c:1648 flint.sentex.net:nntp ESTABLISHED
My newshost is xwing.xwing.org and my isp's newshost is flint.sentex.net.
The nntp connection to xwing.xwing.org is tin connecting to my system's
news server. The nntp connection to flint.sentex.net is suck's connection
to my isp's news server.
If you are indeed connected to your own news server, then your problem is
just one of ip routing and loading the dummy module will let you connect
to your own news server even when you are not connected to your isp.
(That's what I do on my system).
> I tried out suck. It made contact with the ISP's NNTP-server and did
> nothing further but complaining about not finding a history-file. When
> I use the -H (or is -h) option it stopped complaining but still
> did nothing.
Make sure you have configured suck properly. That means configuring files
in the /etc/suck directory and also possibly changing some paths in the
get-news script before it will work properly. I recommend that you
"instrument" the get-news script by sticking in some echo statements to
print out the paths that the get-news program is using so you can ensure
they are correct. I also had to adjust the filtering done by the put-news
script in order to be able to feed news batches back to my isp's news
server.
> How can I download the newsgroups I want to subscribe and read them on
> my own system in my own time?
You are on the right path. You need to set up a news server and also
suck. You also have to have your IP routing set up properly too.
> It was a straight forward thing when I used Windows (even without reading
> a single bit of documentation). After a few hours of reading and
> experimenting in Linux, I had no success and I do not even know which
> road to travel.
A few hours is a very small investment in time. Don't forget that when
you use Windows, you are using client software. By using Linux and trying
to set up INN or CNews on your system, you are setting up a UNIX system
running news (and other) server software. You are effectively setting up
a mini isp yourself and that is bound to require a greater investment of
your time.
Best regards,
Nick
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nick Busigin nick@xwing.org
To obtain my pgp public key, email me with the subject: "get pgp-key"
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