knews refuses to compose, domain-name unavailable
Knews receives articles wonderfully.
However, whenever I try to reply to mail, I get the message
"Domain name not available, posting will not be allowed!"
Of course, there is a domain-name problem of some sort.
My domain-name should be something like "mnsinc.com".
In the mail-user-agents of the mh lineage and in pine, I set my "From:
jameson@mnsinc.com" address. In netscape's news handler, I do similarly. I
see no way to set a "From:..." address for knews. This lack of a correct
return (From) address I presume results in the above error message "Domain
name not available".
If I had a 24-hour ethernet connection, I would configure my system simply,
placing the domain-name in /etc/hosts along with my permanent IP address. But
like most home users, I have but a dynamic IP address, so I let my pppd
startup handle domains with the "defaultdomain" option. I see no way to use
the results of "defaultdomain" with knews, though this would solve my problem.
I have but one entry in /etc/hosts,
127.0.0.1 rabbit localhost
with the "rabbit" alias and no domain-name since for the majority of the time
I am offline. I use no /etc/resolv.conf as my connections work wonderfully
without it, and even better now that I have installed bind and consequently
run named only during network connections with pppd.
Once in a crazy mood, I wanted to make my networking more obvious, so I used
127.0.0.1 rabbit.dynamic-ppp-has-no-domain.home rabbit localhost
but the odd domain cause problems, so I dropped that entry.
While probably irrelevant, I am even more reluctant to set a domain-name since
I might connect to either of two ISPs, with of course different domains. I
feel, particularly for the home (often more naive) user, network configuration
should be simple. Seeking this simplicity, I have left out the apparently
unnecessary /etc/resolv.conf and have not added a line to the ip-up script
that would copy a different /etc/hosts depending on the ISP I contact and
whether my pppd is up/down.
Such problems as this make me wish Debian Linux had more sanctioned software.
As Debian sanctions smail/INN and makes sure smail/INN work easily/correctly,
other sanctioned software could ease not just configuration, but spending
hours deciding which software, eg, mail-user-agent, works well, then
configuring it. Of course, such sanctioning would change often since the
better software available in Debian changes often.
As I say, all my networking works wonderfully, but I cannot get knews to
create/respond-to news. Any ideas?
--
Jim Burt, NJ9L, Fairfax, Virginia, USA
jameson@mnsinc.com http://www.mnsinc.com/jameson
jameson@pressroom.com
"If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely
valid human experience." --William James, Varieties of Religious
Experience
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