Fwd: Re: Lightweight news server for Linux News Project?

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

------- Forwarded Message

To: arma@mit.edu, mibsoft@mibsoftware.com
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 98 12:58:03 -0500
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
Subject: Re: Lightweight news server for Linux News Project?
From: mibsoft@mibsoftware.com (Forrest J. Cavalier III)

In article <6r0rra$eh1@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>, arma@belegost.mit.edu wrote...  >
[snip]
>
>I have decided that an NNTP-based mechanism to keep news synchronized
>between the servers is the way to go. However, most news servers I've
>looked at are either too bulky and intensive (eg INN, C News) or too
>specific or fragile (eg Leafnode). What we want is a simple NNTP-based
>transfer method (such as the Net::NNTP perl module) combined with a simple
>server that spools, expires, maintains several distinct newsgroups (perhaps
>several dozen), supports pgp authentication, and figures out which news
>items should be sent to which other servers and does it. Ideally, it
>would also have hooks to call scripts when new news arrives. It doesn't
>need to be very configurable, but it needs to be lightweight and secure.
>In our case, it won't be connected at all to the rest of Usenet.

Uh, you want something not bulky which does all that?  PaperAndPencil(tm)
comes to mind.
	- very simple, needs no installation instructions.
        - very low profile, low resource utilization
        - Multi-lingual.  Works in Swahili and Cantonese as well English,
          for example.

Downsides:
        - The PGP calculations by hand are a bit time-consuming.

If you want software, get INN 1.7.2, compile with MMAP off, and you
have a great local-only server which does all of the above, only
takes up a couple of meg of resident memory, and sits idle most
of the time.  You have complete control over transfers, can run
a script for every arriving article which is stored in its own
file.

INN 1.7.2 is extremely well documented and very, very stable.
(Make sure you use the config.data from INN 1.5.1 though.  See
the installation instructions at:
    http://www.mibsoftware.com/userkt/inn/
)  Or just install it using a recent RedHat rpm.

Forrest J. Cavalier III, Mib Software, INN customization and consulting 
'Pay-as-you-go' commercial support for INN: Only $64/hour! 
Searchable hypertext INN docs, FAQ, RFCs, etc: 650+ pages: Free access! 
   http://www.mibsoftware.com/innsup.htm 

>
>I feel certain that something like this has already been created, or at 
>the least is currently being worked on. I would very much prefer to use
>existing software on this, since it will have authors and a user base
>who has presumably tested much of it already. Our website is at
>http://linuxunited.org/projects/news/ where you'll find a lot more
>information about our plans and discussions. Please let me know if you can
>help out in any way.
>
>Thanks,
>--Roger (arma@mit.edu)
>

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