** sp4si Script package for Suck & INN **

V0.95b 08.02.1999
[ CHANGES | DEUTSCH ]


Introdution:

This script package is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. The package is distributed in the hope that it will be useful but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY.

(c) 1998 Peter Sobisch, All rights reserved.


Because at the beginning are many elementary questions and nobody wants to read long and tedious manual, I decided to write this as a question-answer document. This text is written as WWW-Page and as regular manual (included to sp4si package).

Contens

  1. What is sp4si ?
  2. What does sp4si ?
  3. Why and when I need sp4si ?
  4. What I need to use sp4si ?
  5. How does it works ?
  6. Syntax and functions
    1. configuration: env, newshosts and other
    2. active - scripts: get.active and rebuild.active
    3. spool - scripts: nntp.up, nntp.down, uucp.batch and uucp.cico
    4. subscriptions - script
    5. Installation script: install.sh
  7. Installation
  8. Configuration: first steps
  9. Tips
    1. inserting of local newsgroups
    2. automatic update of active file
  10. Where to get sp4si ?


1. What is sp4si ?

sp4si is a script package, which makes the management with INN and suck much easier. It keeps the configuration level be increased count of newshosts on the same level. sp4si is originated because of misery and is designed for everybody who uses a dial-up internet connection and wants to read the news offline on his own local INN newssystem or for everybody who just wants to expand his INN newssystem.

In the beginning sp4si was just a small script for automatically subscribing the newsgroups on the local INN system and it becames to automatically multihost- and multitaskingable spool tool for INN and suck newssystems.

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2. What does sp4si ?

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3. Why and when I need sp4si ?

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4. What I need to use sp4si ?

You will need the following packages:

It requires a configured and running INN newssystem (local configuration) and UUCP (if needed). How to very simply configure the INN system you can read in the german (sorry) manual from Carsten Voss  "Einrichtung eines News-Systems unter Linux". Furthermore you must have suck package installed and the suck command must be in your PATH environment (for example you can copy this to /usr/local/bin directory).

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5. How does it work ?

sp4si consists of some shell scripts which can be divided into three parts and two configuration files: newshosts and env. The newshosts file contains the site- and hostnames which have to be spooled. The env file contains the environment variables and will be included at the runtime by most scripts of sp4si.
The first part of the sp4si serves the active file management, the second part spools the news articles and the last part takes care of automatically newsgroups subscribing.

Nearly all scripts will read the newshosts file and apply on valid entries their activities. This is an advantage, if you want to add a new newshost, you have only to insert it at the newshosts and newsfeeds (INN) file. Because of the central environment sp4si makes the management much simpler and increases the productivity of your newssystem. If you want to use the spool frontend spool.news (is recommended), all spool activities will be logged and you could optionally send the spool reports with the spool result by email or post it to a defined newsgroup.

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6. Syntax and functions

6.1. Configuration files

Nearly all scripts allow to invoke they with -h or --help or -? parameter to show the syntax and help.

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6.2. active scripts

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6.3. Spool scripts

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6.4 subscribe script

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6.5. Installation script

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7. Installation

ATTENTION: befor installing sp4si the INN must be already be right configured and runable, this counts for UUCP too.
UUCP installation and configuration decripsiot belongs not to this package and you have to get it from other resources (f.e.: UUCP-HowTo). On demand could the UUCP configuration be included in the future. The sp4si package consists of following parts:

The archive must be unpacked first by typing tar xvfz sp4si.095.tar.gz. After that, you must change in the created subdirectory sp4si by typing cd sp4si and start the install.sh script. The install.sh script expects no parameters. The innshellvars file of your INN installation will be found and parsed. Only the destination directory for the sp4si installation will be asked manually. If the innshellvars file couldn't be found, all othe required paths will be asked too.

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8. Configuration: first steps

8.1. Step 1: newshosts configuration

After the installaion is successfully finished, the newshosts could be inserted to the newshosts file (you will find this in your destination directory), it would suppose so:

newshosts (example):

# example for NNTP sites
3dfx       news.3dfx.com
stardiv    news.stardiv.de       nntp/nntp
# example for UUCP sites
uucpsite   uucpsite.domain.com   uucp/uucp   gzip   gup@uucpsite.domain.com  secret16
uucp2      uucp2.domain.com      uucp        cat    gupaccount@uucp2.domain.com  der63lfd
# example
remsite    news.domain.com       nntp/uucp   cat    gup@news.domain.com secrt.32

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8.2. Step 2: download of active file

After you have changed and saved the newshosts file, you can attempt the second step, the active files must be loaded from your configured newshosts. By starting the script below, were alls active files downloaded and stored in site/<site> subdirectories:

get.active

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8.3. Step 3: newsfeeds configuration

After all active file are successfully downloaded, you have to attempt the difficultest step of the sp4si configuration: the newsfeeds entries. You have to take a look at the (new downloaded) active files in site/<site> subdirectories and have to decide which newsgroups from which newshosts you will spool to your local newsserver. You should decide so, that each newsgroup will be spooled only by one host, you avoid therewith to propagate newsgroups between your newsfeeds. Therefore you should read the man page for newsfeeds. You can look for an example in the german manual (sorry) too: "Erweiterung von INN & suck auf mehrere Newsserver".

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8.4. Step 4: create new active file

After the newsfeeds are configured a new active file for your INN can be generated by typing:

rebuild.active

On running this, a new active file will be created (regarding the localhost.active file) and moved to the INN's active file. For that, INN will be stopped, his config files reloaded and parsed for new (the changes on newsfeeds file will be active) and finally restarted.

Ready !

So, we have finished our configuration of sp4si and you are now able to spool all your configured news hosts.
For your sysnopsis:

  1. enter <site> and <newshost> and maybe <up/down> <packer> <gupmail> <password> too in newshosts file
  2. connect to internet and let run get.active, than you can continue offline
  3. enter newsfeeds in newsfeeds file
  4. rebuild.active

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9. Tips

sp4si is developed for decrease the news administration, here will be some usefull tips presents which can help you by your daily work with sp4si.

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9.1. Inserting of local newsgroups

to add a new newsgroup f.e: my.newsgroup, it must be inserted in localhost.active file:

localhost.active (example):

localhost.test 0000000000 0000000001 y
localhost.spool 0000000000 0000000001 y
my.newsgroup 0000000000 0000000001 y

then rebuild.active must be restarted:

rebuild.active

after that all we have now 3 local newsgroups.

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9.2. Automatic active file update

The offer of newsgroups will be continously changed, new newsgroups will be created, old deleted and subgroups created. For being up to date, you could run the update of the active automatically. For this you must create a new cron-job for the user news in the crontab(5):

crontab -u news -e

and then insert following lines:

# set vars
ONLINE=/etc/ppp/ppp-on      # how to go online
OFFLINE=/etc/ppp/ppp-off    # how to go offline
SP4SI=/var/lib/news/sp4si   # path for sp4si
0 0 1 * * root $ONLINE; $SP4SI/get.active; $OFFLINE; $SP4SI/rebuild.active

there will be every 1st of month at 0:00 o'clock active files downloaded and a new local active file created.
For more information about crontab type: man 5 crontab.

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10. Where to get sp4si ?

You can get the sp4si package an the LAMEpage in Linux/News area. Or you use one of the links listed below:

http://home.pages.de/~lamepage/linux/news/sp4si.095.tar.gz
http://members.xoom.com/LAMEpage/linux/news/sp4si.095.tar.gz
http://cruise.de/ps/sp4si.095.tar.gz

If you have found any bugs or have any suggestion to make sp4si better please write me an email to: Peter Sobisch <petersob@gmx.net>.

I want to thank Carsten Voss , whose manual has helped me to install my first INN news system and Kevin John Kimmel for correcting my english manual.

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©1998 by Peter Sobisch