How to Install and Configure INN
under RedHat Linux 7.2

by Allen B. Downey

Assuming that you didn't install INN during installation, you can do it later with the rpm files. Put disk #1 in the cdrom drive and

mount /mnt/cdrom
cd /mnt/cdrom/RedHat/RPMS
rpm -i cleanfeed-0.95.7b-12.noarch.rpm inn-2.3.2-5.i386.rpm

Some of the files that get created are:

# cron jobs that expire messages, etc.
/etc/cron.daily/inn-cron-expire
/etc/cron.hourly/inn-cron-nntpsend
/etc/cron.hourly/inn-cron-rnews

# configuration files
/etc/news

# startup scripts
/etc/rc.d/init.d/innd
/etc/rc.news

# executables
/usr/bin/

# libraries
/usr/lib/

# documentation
/usr/share/doc/inn-2.3.2

# history files and related stuff
/var/lib/news
/var/lib/news/active
/var/lib/news/active.times
/var/lib/news/distributions
/var/lib/news/history
/var/lib/news/newsgroups
/var/lib/news/subscriptions
/var/lib/news/tmp
/var/log/news
/var/log/news/OLD
/var/run/news

# spooled articles
/var/spool/news
/var/spool/news/archive
/var/spool/news/articles
/var/spool/news/incoming
/var/spool/news/incoming/bad
/var/spool/news/innfeed
/var/spool/news/outgoing
/var/spool/news/overview

The following instructions are for a centralized server that doesn't get any feeds from outside or provide articles to other peers.

Become the news user
```
su - news
```

Edit configuration files

Change directory to /etc/news. For all of the following, you just have to edit and/or uncomment things that are already there.

In inn.conf, set the name of your organization:

organization:           Rocky's News Server

In storage.conf, add:

method tradspool {
	newsgroups: *
	class: 0
}

In readers.conf, add:

auth "local" {
    hosts: "*.wellesley.edu, wellesley.edu"
    default: "@wellesley.edu"
}

access "local" {
    users: "@wellesley.edu"
    newsgroups: "*"
}

Create the history database

This part is stupid, but here's how to do it.

cd /var/lib/news
makedbz -i
chmod 664 *n*

mv history.n.dir history.dir
mv history.n.hash history.hash
mv history.n.index history.index

Start the daemon
```
/etc/init.d/innd start
```
If you want the daemon to start at boot time, run
```
chkconfig innd on
```
Create a group
The first group I created was called freesoftware.
```
ctlinnd newgroup freesoftware
```
Use a client to test the configuration
I used xrn
```
NNTPSERVER=rocky
export NNTPSERVER
xrn &
```

Obviously, these directions are specific to a very simple configuration. If you want to do something more complicated, you have to read other INN documentation. Good luck!

How to Install and Configure INN under RedHat Linux 7.2

How to Install and Configure INN
under RedHat Linux 7.2