Provided by: inn2-inews_2.7.2~20240212-1build3_amd64 
NAME
inn.conf - Configuration data for InterNetNews programs
DESCRIPTION
inn.conf in pathetc is the primary general configuration file for all InterNetNews
programs. Settings which control the general operation of various programs, as well as
the paths to all portions of the news installation, are found here. The INNCONF
environment variable, if set, specifies an alternate path to inn.conf.
This file is intended to be fairly static. Any changes made to it will generally not
affect any running programs until they restart. Unlike nearly every other configuration
file, inn.conf cannot be reloaded dynamically using ctlinnd(8); innd(8) must be stopped
and restarted for relevant changes to inn.conf to take effect ("ctlinnd xexec innd" is the
fastest way to do this.)
Blank lines and lines starting with a number sign ("#") are ignored. All other lines
specify parameters, and should be of the following form:
<name>: <value>
(Any amount of whitespace can be put after the colon and is optional.) If the value
contains embedded whitespace or any of the characters "[]<>{}"\:;", it must be enclosed in
double quotes (""). A backslash ("\") can be used to escape quotes and backslashes inside
double quotes. <name> is case-sensitive; "server" is not the same as "Server" or
"SERVER". (inn.conf parameters are generally all in lowercase.)
If <name> occurs more than once in the file, the first value is used. Some parameters
specified in the file may be overridden by environment variables. Most parameters have
default values if not specified in inn.conf; those defaults are noted in the description
of each parameter.
Many parameters take a boolean value. For all such parameters, the value may be specified
as "true", "yes", or "on" to turn it on and may be any of "false", "no", or "off" to turn
it off. The case of these values is significant.
This documentation is extremely long and organized as a reference manual rather than as a
tutorial. If this is your first exposure to INN and these parameters, it would be better
to start by reading other man pages and referring to this one only when an inn.conf
parameter is explicitly mentioned. Those parameters which need to be changed when setting
up a new server are discussed in INSTALL.
PARAMETERS
General Settings
These parameters are used by a wide variety of different components of INN.
domain
This should be the domain name of the local host. It should not have a leading
period, and it should not be a full host address. It is used only if the
inn_getfqdn() routine in libinn(3) cannot get the fully qualified domain name by using
either the gethostname(3) or getaddrinfo(3) calls. The check is very simple; if
either routine returns a name with a period in it, then it is assumed to have the full
domain name. The default value is unset.
This parameter is not meant to be used to affect the right-hand side of autogenerated
Message-IDs; you have to directly use domain in readers.conf(5) instead, for
backwards-compatible reasons. (The name of this parameter in readers.conf will likely
be changed in a future major release to disambiguate its use.)
innflags
The flags to pass to innd on startup. See innd(8) for details on the possible flags.
The default value is unset.
Note that these flags are only used when innd is started from rc.news or nntpsend.
mailcmd
The path to the program to be used for mailing reports and errors to the news
administrator. The default is pathbin/innmail. This should not normally need to be
changed.
mta The command to use when sending a mail (e.g. mailing postings to moderators,
gatewaying news to mail, sending statistics to the TOP1000 project, mailing errors and
reports to the news administrator). Some programs use innmail(1) which in turn runs
the command in the mta parameter. The message, with its headers, will be piped into
this mta program. Depending on the calling program, additional header fields may be
added when appropriate, like To, Subject or Auto-Submitted header fields.
The string "%s", if present, will be replaced by the expected recipient(s) like the
e-mail address of the moderator or of a remote list. It's strongly recommended for
this command to end with "%s" on the command line rather than, when not present, use
the addresses in the To and Cc header fields of the message, since the latter approach
allows the news server to be abused as a mechanism to send mail to arbitrary addresses
and will result in unexpected behaviour. There is no default value for this
parameter; it must be set in inn.conf or a fatal error message will be logged via
syslog.
For most systems, "/usr/lib/sendmail -oi -oem %s" (adjusted for the correct path to
sendmail, and between double quotes) is a good choice.
To improve deliverability of sent mails, especially moderated group submissions, you
are encouraged to install a modern and full-featured MTA like Postfix instead of a
frugal MTA like Nullmailer. You'll then be able to configure bounces and benefit from
DSN (Delivery Status Notifications). Useful flags to add, if your mta program
supports them, are "-N failure" (to only return a DSN on failure, not delay), "-F
'Newsmaster'" (to set the full name of the notification), "-fnewsmaster@server.com"
(to set the envelope sender address), and "-opnobodyreturn" (a privacy option to only
return headers in the DSN). Feel free to add any other options you think appropriate.
pathhost
What to put into the Path header field to represent the local site. This path
identity is added to the Path header field body of all articles that pass through the
system, including locally posted articles, and is also used when processing some
control messages and when naming the server in status reports. There is no default
value; this parameter must be set in inn.conf or INN will not start. A good value to
use is the fully qualified hostname of the system.
The main purpose of the path identity is to avoid being proposed by your peers
articles that already contain your path identity in their Path header fields.
In case you are running several internal news servers, you may want to also set
pathcluster so as to define the primary path identity to advertise to your peers for
their use in correctly identifying your news servers and adding the right path
diagnostic (see Section 3.2.1 of RFC 5537 for more details about path diagnostics).
runasgroup
The group under which the news server will run. The default is "news" (or the group
specified at configure time) and should not normally need to be changed.
runasuser
The user under which the news server will run. The default is "news" (or the user
specified at configure time) and should not normally need to be changed.
server
The name of the default NNTP server. If nnrpdposthost is not set and UNIX domain
sockets are not supported, nnrpd tries to hand off locally-posted articles through an
INET domain socket to this server.
actsync, getlist, inews, and nntpget also use this value as the default server to
connect to. In the latter cases, the value of the NNTPSERVER environment variable, if
it exists, overrides this. The default value is unset. You may want to set it to
"localhost" or the fully qualified domain name of your local news server or of a
remote news server.
rnews uses this value as a fallback when nnrpdposthost is not set, and there's no
localhost server.
syntaxchecks
A list of values controlling the level of checks performed by innd and nnrpd. For
instance:
syntaxchecks: [ no-laxmid ]
The last occurrence of a given value takes precedence, that is to say if "no-laxmid
laxmid" is listed, laxmid takes precedence.
Only one check can currently be enabled/disabled:
laxmid / no-laxmid
When laxmid is set, Message-IDs containing ".." in the left part are accepted, as
well as Message-IDs with two "@". Some non-compliant news posters generate such
syntactically invalid Message-IDs, especially in binary newsgroups. The default
is no-laxmid, that is to say INN strictly follows the standard regarding syntax
checks (it will neither accept these articles nor propagate them to remote peers).
Feed Configuration
These parameters govern incoming and outgoing feeds: what size of articles are accepted,
what filtering and verification is performed on them, whether articles in groups not
carried by the server are still stored and propagated, and other similar settings.
artcutoff
Articles older than this number of days are dropped. The default value is "10", which
means that an incoming article will be rejected if its posting date is farther in the
past than ten days.
In order to disable that check on date, you can set this parameter to "0".
The number on the "/remember/" line in expire.ctl should probably be one more than
that number in order to take into account articles whose posting date is one day into
the future.
bindaddress
Which IP address innd(8) should bind itself to. This must be in dotted-quad format
(nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn). If set to "all" or not set, innd defaults to listening on all
interfaces. The value of the INND_BIND_ADDRESS environment variable, if set,
overrides this setting. The default value is unset.
This parameter has no effect when systemd socket activation is used.
bindaddress6
Like bindaddress but for IPv6 sockets. If only one of the bindaddress and
bindaddress6 parameters is used, then only the socket for the corresponding address
family is created. If both parameters are used then two sockets are created. If
neither of them is used, the list of sockets to listen on will be determined by the
system library getaddrinfo(3) function. The value of the INND_BIND_ADDRESS6, if set,
overrides this setting. The default value is unset.
Note that you will generally need to put double quotes ("") around this value if you
set it, since IPv6 addresses contain colons.
This parameter has no effect when systemd socket activation is used.
docancels
This parameter is intended for sites concerned about abuse of cancels, or that wish to
enforce a mechanism to authenticate cancels. This parameter does not change how NoCeM
notices are processed by perl-nocem(8), and only applies to cancel articles (with a
Control header field) and supersede requests (with a Supersedes header field).
Unless rejected by the use of a filter hook, innd always accepts and propagates cancel
articles and supersede requests. However, actually processing such articles on the
local news server depends on this parameter which can take the following values:
"require-auth"
Only articles originally protected by the Cancel-Lock authentication mechanism can
be withdrawn by a valid authenticated cancel article or a valid authenticated
supersede request. Withdrawals of articles not originally protected by Cancel-
Lock will not be executed.
This is the default value if innd knows how to authenticate cancels (that is to
say if INN was built with Cancel-Lock support). Otherwise, the behaviour will be
the same as "none".
"auth"
Withdrawals of articles not originally protected by the Cancel-Lock authentication
mechanism will always be executed. However, if the original article is protected,
only a valid authenticated cancel article or a valid authenticated supersede
request will permit withdrawing it. (If INN was not built with Cancel-Lock
support, such protected articles won't be withdrawn.)
"none"
Neither cancel articles nor supersede requests will be processed; no articles will
be withdrawn.
This is the default value if innd does not know how to authenticate cancels (that
is to say if INN was not built with Cancel-Lock support) as it has no means to
ensure that these withdrawal requests are legitimate.
"all"
innd will process all cancel articles and supersede requests, even if
unauthenticated, forged or with bad authentication. You should be sure of what
you are doing if you choose that value as any article can be withdrawn (even by
someone who is not the author of the article).
dontrejectfiltered
Normally innd(8) rejects incoming articles when directed to do so by any enabled
article filters (Perl or Python). However, this parameter causes such articles not to
be rejected; instead filtering can be applied on outbound articles. If this parameter
is set, all articles will be accepted on the local machine, but articles rejected by
the filter will not be fed to any peers specified in newsfeeds with the "Af" flag.
The default value is false.
If this parameter is set, you may also use the filtered key of storage method entries
in storage.conf to store filtered articles in dedicated storage classes.
hiscachesize
If set to a value other than "0", a hash of recently received Message-IDs is kept in
memory to speed history lookups. The value is the amount of memory to devote to the
cache in kilobytes. The cache is only used for incoming feeds and a small cache can
hold quite a few Message-IDs, so large values aren't necessarily useful unless you
have incoming feeds that are badly delayed. innreport can provide useful statistics
regarding the use of the history cache, especially when it misses. A good value for a
system with more than one incoming feed is "256"; systems with only one incoming feed
should probably set this to "0". The default value is "256".
ignorenewsgroups
Whether newsgroup creation control messages (newgroup and rmgroup) should be fed as if
they were posted to the newsgroup they are creating or deleting rather than to the
newsgroups listed in the Newsgroups header field. If this parameter is set, the
newsgroup affected by the control message will be extracted from the Control header
field and the article will be fed as if its Newsgroups header field contained solely
that newsgroup. This is useful for routing control messages to peers when they are
posted to irrelevant newsgroups that shouldn't be matched against the peer's desired
newsgroups in newsfeeds. This is a boolean value and the default is false.
immediatecancel
When using the timecaf storage method, article cancels are normally just cached to be
cancelled, not cancelled immediately. If this is set to true, they will instead by
cancelled as soon as the cancel is processed. This is a boolean value and the default
is false.
This setting is ignored unless the timecaf storage method is used.
linecountfuzz
If set to something other than "0", the line count of the article is checked against
the Lines header field body of the article (if present) and the article is rejected if
the values differ by more than this amount. A reasonable setting is "5", which is the
standard maximum signature length plus one (some injection software calculates the
Lines header field before adding the signature). The default value is "0", which
tells INN not to check the Lines header field of incoming articles.
maxartsize
The maximum size of article (headers and body) that will be accepted by the server, in
bytes. A value of "0" allows any size of article, but note that innd will crash if
system memory is exceeded. The default value is "1000000" (approximately 1 MB). This
is checked against the article in wire format (CRLF at the end of each line, leading
periods protected, and with the trailing "\r\n.\r\n" at the end). See also
localmaxartsize.
maxconnections
The maximum number of incoming NNTP connections innd(8) will accept. The default
value is "50".
pathalias
If set, this value is prepended as a path identity immediately to the right of
pathhost in the Path header field body of accepted articles if it doesn't already
appear in the Path header field. The default value is unset.
The main purpose of this parameter is when there is some other path identity that you
want to add to the Path header field of every article passing through your news
server(s) for some reason, maybe because you used to have some other path identity and
you have peers that are configured to not send you articles that have already passed
through that entity, and you can't get them to update to your current path identity
for some reason.
pathcluster
If set, this value is appended as a path identity immediately to the left of pathhost
in the Path header field body of accepted articles if it isn't already present as the
leftmost element of the Path header field body. The default value is unset.
The main purpose of this parameter is to set the name that you are using to identify
yourself to peers (i.e. the path identity they should expect to see from you) in the
cases where that doesn't match the main path identity pathhost for this news server.
(The most common case where that happens is when you have multiple news servers that
you want to present as a "united front" to the outside world and identify as the same
virtual server, but you still want distinct path identities so those servers can
internally feed each other. Also, even without internal feeds, pathcluster could be
set to an organization name if the organization has multiple news servers.)
pgpverify
Whether to enable PGP verification of control messages other than cancel. This is a
boolean value and the default in the inn.conf sample file is based on whether
configure found pgp, pgpv, pgpgpg, gpgv, gpgv1, gpgv2, gpg, gpg1 or gpg2. Note that
if the parameter is not present in the configuration file, it defaults to false.
port
What TCP port innd(8) should listen on. The default value is "119", the standard NNTP
port.
remembertrash
By default, innd(8) records rejected articles in history so that, if offered the same
article again, it can be refused before it is sent. If you wish to disable this
behavior, set this to false. This can cause a substantial increase in the amount of
bandwidth consumed by incoming news if you have several peers and reject a lot of
articles, so be careful with it. Even if this is set to true, INN won't log some
rejected articles to history if there's reason to believe the article might be
accepted if offered by a different peer, so there is usually no reason to set this to
false (although doing so can decrease the size of the history file). This is a
boolean value and the default is true.
sourceaddress
Which local IP address to bind to for outgoing NNTP sockets (used by innxmit(8) among
other programs, as well as innfeed(8) as long as not overridden by bindaddress in
innfeed.conf(5)). This must be in dotted-quad format (nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn). If set to
"all", the operating system will choose the source IP address for outgoing
connections. The default value is unset.
sourceaddress6
Like sourceaddress but for IPv6 sockets. Note that you will generally need to put
double quotes ("") around this value if you set it, since IPv6 addresses contain
colons.
verifygroups
Set this to true to reject incoming articles which contain an unknown newsgroup in the
whole list of newsgroups to which they are posted. In case wanttrash is set to true,
such articles will still be rejected. This is a boolean value, and the default is
false.
wanttrash
Set this to true if you want to file articles posted to unknown newsgroups (newsgroups
not in the active file) into the "junk" newsgroup rather than rejecting them. This is
sometimes useful for a transit news server that needs to propagate articles (according
to the setting of "Aj" in the newsfeeds feed pattern) in all newsgroups regardless if
they're carried locally. This is a boolean value and the default is false.
The logtrash parameter specifies whether such articles should be logged as posted to
unwanted newsgroups in the news log file.
wipcheck
If INN is offered an article by a peer on one channel, it will return deferral
responses (code 436) to all other offers of that article for this many seconds.
(After this long, if the peer that offered the article still hasn't sent it, it will
be accepted from other channels.) The default value is "5" and probably doesn't need
to be changed.
wipexpire
How long, in seconds, to keep track of message IDs offered on a channel before
expiring articles that still haven't been sent. The default value is "10" and
probably doesn't need to be changed.
History Settings
The following parameter affect the history database.
hismethod
Which history storage method to use. The only currently supported value is "hisv6".
There is no default value; this parameter must be set.
"hisv6"
Stores history data in the INN history v6 format: history(5) text file and a
number of dbz database files; this may be in true history v6 format, or tagged
hash format, depending on the build options. Separation of these two is a project
which has not yet been undertaken.
Article Storage
These parameters affect how articles are stored on disk.
cnfscheckfudgesize
If set to a value other than "0", the claimed size of articles in CNFS cycbuffs is
checked against maxartsize plus this value, and if larger, the CNFS cycbuff is
considered corrupt. This can be useful as a sanity check after a system crash, but be
careful using this parameter if you have changed maxartsize recently. The default
value is "0".
enableoverview
Whether to write out overview data for articles. If set to false, INN will run much
faster, but reading news from the system will be impossible (the server will be for
news transit only). If this option is set to true, ovmethod must also be set. This
is a boolean value and the default is true.
extraoverviewadvertised
Besides the seven standard overview fields (which are in order "Subject", "From",
"Date", "Message-ID", "References", ":bytes" and ":lines") and the eighth "Xref:full"
field required by INN in order to handle crossposts, it is possible to add other
fields in the overview database. This parameter expects a list of such header field
names. Overview data for these additional header fields will be generated for each
new article at the time of arrival. For instance, if you specify:
extraoverviewadvertised: [ Path Newsgroups ]
it implies that nnrpd will advertise "Path:full" and "Newsgroups:full" as the ninth
and tenth fields in response to LIST OVERVIEW.FMT and that these two header field
bodies will be stored in the overview database for each new article. It may be a
useful configuration to have as some news readers do article scoring with rules based
on these two header fields. Having them in the overview database permits being faster
at scoring for these readers, without having to separately request them, but on the
other hand these additional fields are also present in overview requests of all the
other readers, which slightly slows their reading.
The default value is an empty list (no additional fields are stored). Owing to
optimizations when innd parses the articles it receives, it is possible that all the
values in the list are not recognized by innd as standard header field names. In such
cases, innd will log an error in news.err at startup and the unrecognized fields will
be discarded. Moreover, the deprecated "Bytes" and "Lines" header fields, already
present in the standard overview fields as metadata items, cannot be added.
You should advertise only fields for which the overview database is consistent, that
is to say it records the content or absence of these fields for all articles,
including those already existing in the news spool. Consequently, if you decide to
add or remove a field from your overview database, you should either modify
extraoverviewadvertised and rebuild your overview database with makehistory(8) after
removing all existing overview files, or implement a transition period by first using
extraoverviewhidden as described below.
Use of a transition period can accommodate most overview reconfigurations, but certain
drastic changes may still require a complete overview rebuild.
If for instance you want to store the content of the Injection-Info header field body
in addition to the fields already stored above, you should use:
extraoverviewadvertised: [ Path Newsgroups ]
extraoverviewhidden: [ Injection-Info ]
This way, "Injection-Info:full" will not be advertised by nnrpd but will be stored for
each new article. Once you know that all articles in your overview database record
the content or absence of that new field (if expire.ctl(5) is parameterized so that
all your articles expire within 30 days, you can assume the database is in such a
state after 30 days -- however, note that time to expiration can be unpredictable with
CNFS and you then have to use "cnfsstat -a" for checking on when buffers have rolled
over), you should put:
extraoverviewadvertised: [ Path Newsgroups Injection-Info ]
extraoverviewhidden: [ ]
The "Injection-Info" value must be added at the end of the list because order matters
and fields mentioned in extraoverviewhidden are generated after those mentioned in
extraoverviewadvertised. nnrpd will now advertise "Injection-Info:full" in response
to the LIST OVERVIEW.FMT command ("full" indicates that the header field name appears
followed by its value).
Now suppose you want to remove the content of the Newsgroups header field from the
overview. As order matters, the overview database will no longer be consistent for
the Injection-Info header field. Therefore, you need to specify:
extraoverviewadvertised: [ Path ]
extraoverviewhidden: [ Injection-Info ]
And once overview data is accurate for all articles, you should use:
extraoverviewadvertised: [ Path Injection-Info ]
extraoverviewhidden: [ ]
Note that you have to restart nnrpd if it runs as a daemon whenever you change the
value of extraoverviewadvertised; a mere "ctlinnd xexec innd" is not enough.
extraoverviewhidden
This parameter should be used in conjunction with extraoverviewadvertised (see above
for more details). It expects a list of header field names. Overview data for these
header fields will be generated for each new article at the time of arrival but,
contrary to the fields mentioned in extraoverviewadvertised, nnrpd will not advertise
them in response to the LIST OVERVIEW.FMT command. It also implies that nnrpd will
not look in the overview database for fields mentioned in extraoverviewhidden when it
handles HDR, XHDR and XPAT requests as the overview database is not considered
consistent yet for these fields; nnrpd will have to parse the headers of the requested
articles in the news spool, which is slower than directly querying the overview
database.
The default value is an empty list (no additional fields are stored). Owing to
optimizations when innd parses the articles it receives, it is possible that all the
values in the list are not recognized by innd as standard header field names. In such
cases, innd will log an error in news.err at startup and the unrecognized fields will
be discarded. Moreover, the deprecated "Bytes" and "Lines" header fields, already
present in the standard overview fields as metadata items, cannot be added.
groupbaseexpiry
Whether to enable newsgroup-based expiry. If set to false, article expiry is done
based on storage class of storing method. If set to true (and overview information is
available), expiry is done by newsgroup name. This affects the format of expire.ctl.
This is a boolean value and the default is true.
mergetogroups
Whether to file all postings to "to.*" groups in the pseudonewsgroup "to". If this is
set to true, the newsgroup "to" must exist in the active file or INN will not start.
(See the discussion of "to." groups in innd(8) under CONTROL MESSAGES.) This is a
boolean value and the default is false.
nfswriter
For servers writing articles, determine whether the article spool is on NFS storage.
If set, INN attempts to flush articles to the spool in a more timely manner, rather
than relying on the operating system to flush things such as the CNFS article bitmaps.
You should only set this parameter if you are attempting to use a shared NFS spool on
a machine acting as a single writer within a cluster. This is a boolean value and the
default is false.
overcachesize
How many cache slots to reserve for open overview files. If INN is writing overview
files (see enableoverview), ovmethod is set to "tradindexed", and this is set to a
value other than "0", INN will keep around and open that many recently written-to
overview files in case more articles come in for those newsgroups. Every overview
cache slot consumes two file descriptors, so be careful not to set this value too
high. You may be able to use the "ulimit -n" command to see how many open file
descriptors your operating system allows. innd(8) also uses an open file descriptor
for each incoming feed and outgoing channel or batch file, and if it runs out of open
file descriptors, it may throttle and stop accepting new news. The default value is
"128" (which is probably still too low if you have a large number of file descriptors
available).
Please have a look at the documentation of the rlimitnofile parameter, as increasing
the default value may lead to an exhaustion of usable file descriptors.
This setting is ignored unless ovmethod is set to "tradindexed".
ovgrouppat
If set, restricts the overview data stored by INN to only the newsgroups matching this
comma-separated list of uwildmat expressions. Newsgroups not matching this setting
may not be readable, and if groupbaseexpiry is set to true and the storage method for
these newsgroups does not have self-expire functionality, storing overview data will
fail. The default is unset.
ovflushcount
How many articles received between flushing their overview data to disk. This
parameter is only used for the buffindexed overview storage method, and defaults to
"50". (Flushing to disk is parameterized differently for other methods: txn_nosync in
ovdb.conf, transrowlimit and transtimelimit in ovsqlite.conf, and always after each
article arrival for tradindexed.)
See icdsynccount (related to flushes of the active and history files) for more
information about this trade-off between faster speed and more data loss if innd
crashes.
ovmethod
Which overview storage method to use. Currently supported values are "buffindexed",
"ovdb", "ovsqlite" and "tradindexed". There is no default value; this parameter must
be set if enableoverview is true (the default).
"buffindexed"
It stores overview data and index information into preconfigured large files like
CNFS. Fast at writing, the "buffindexed" overview storage method can keep up with
a large feed more easily and never consumes additional disk space beyond that
allocated to these buffers. The downside is that these buffers are hard to
recover in case of corruption and somewhat slower for readers and the expiry
process. Also, overview data is limited to 8 KB per article, which may lead to
the lack of integration of a few articles with headers of unusual length into the
overview database. See the buffindexed.conf(5) man page for more details, and
notably how to create the buffers.
"ovdb"
It stores overview information into a Berkeley DB database, whose development pace
has stalled these last years. This method is fast and very robust, but may
require more disk space, unless compression is enabled. Overview data is fetched
one article at a time, which makes this method a bit slower than "ovsqlite" for
readers. See the ovdb(5) man page for more details.
"ovsqlite"
It stores overview information into an SQLite database, known for its long-term
stability and compatibility. Robust and faster than "ovdb" at reading ranges of
overview data (since overview data is transferred in 128-kilobyte chunks between
ovsqlite-server and nnrpd) but somewhat slower at writing, this method may require
more disk space, unless compression is enabled. See the ovsqlite(5) man page for
more details.
"tradindexed"
It uses two files per newsgroup, one containing the overview data and one
containing the index. Fast for readers, but slow to write to because it has to
update two files for each incoming article. Its main advantage is to be the best
tested, the most reliable and the method with the best recovery tools (tdx-util).
storeonxref
If set to true, articles will be stored based on the newsgroup names in the Xref
header field body rather than in the Newsgroups header field body. This affects what
the patterns in storage.conf apply to. The primary interesting effect of setting this
to true is to enable filing of all control messages according to what storage class
the control pseudogroups are filed in rather than according to the newsgroups the
control messages are posted to. This is a boolean value and the default is true.
If the tradspool article storage method is used, storeonxref must be true.
useoverchan
Whether to innd(8) should create overview data internally through libinnstorage(3).
If set to false, innd creates overview data by itself. If set to true, innd does not
create; instead overview data must be created by overchan(8) from an appropriate entry
in newsfeeds. Setting to true may be useful, if innd cannot keep up with incoming
feed and the bottleneck is creation of overview data within innd. This is a boolean
value and the default is false.
wireformat
Only used with the tradspool storage method, this says whether to write articles in
wire format. Wire format means storing articles with "\r\n" at the end of each line
and with periods at the beginning of lines doubled, the article format required by the
NNTP protocol. Articles stored in this format are suitable for sending directly to a
network connection without requiring conversion, and therefore setting this to true
can make the server more efficient. The primary reason not to set this is if you have
old existing software that looks around in the spool and doesn't understand how to
read wire format. Storage methods other than tradspool always store articles in wire
format. This is a boolean value and the default is true.
xrefslave
Whether to act as the slave of another server. If set, INN attempts to duplicate
exactly the article numbering of the server feeding it by looking at the Xref header
field body of incoming articles and assigning the same article numbers to articles as
was noted in the Xref header field body from the upstream server. The result is that
clients should be able to point at either server interchangeably (using some load
balancing scheme, for example) and see the same internal article numbering. Servers
with this parameter set should generally only have one upstream feed, and should
always have nnrpdposthost set to hand locally posted articles off to the master
server. The upstream should be careful to always feed articles in order (innfeed(8)
can have problems with this in the event of a backlog). This is a boolean value and
the default is false.
Reading
These parameters affect the behavior of INN for readers. Most of them are used by
nnrpd(8). There are some special sets of settings that are broken out separately after
the initial alphabetized list.
allownewnews
Whether to allow use of the NEWNEWS command by clients. This command used to put a
heavy load on the server in older versions of INN, but is now reasonably efficient, at
least if only one newsgroup is specified by the client. This is a boolean value and
the default is true. If you use the access parameter in readers.conf, be sure to read
about the way it overrides allownewnews.
articlemmap
Whether to attempt to mmap() articles. Setting this to true will give better
performance on most systems, but some systems have problems with mmap(). If this is
set to false, articles will be read into memory before being sent to readers. This is
a boolean value and the default is true.
clienttimeout
How long (in seconds) a client connection can be idle before it exits. When setting
this parameter, be aware that some newsreaders use the same connection for reading and
posting and don't deal well with the connection timing out while a post is being
composed. If the system isn't having a problem with too many long-lived connections,
it may be a good idea to increase this value to "3600" (an hour). The default value
is "1800" (thirty minutes).
initialtimeout
How long (in seconds) nnrpd will wait for the first command from a reader connection
before dropping the connection. This is a defensive timeout intended to protect the
news server from badly behaved reader clients that open and abandon a multitude of
connections without every closing them. The default value is "10" (ten seconds),
which may need to be increased if many clients connect via slow network links.
msgidcachesize
How many cache slots to reserve for message-IDs to storage token translations. When
serving overview data to clients (NEWNEWS, OVER, etc.), nnrpd(8) can cache the storage
token associated with a message-ID and save the cost of looking it up in the history
file; for some configurations, setting this parameter can save more than 90% of the
wall clock time for a session. The default value is "64000".
nfsreader
For servers reading articles, determine whether the article spool is on NFS storage.
If set, INN will attempt to force articles and overviews to be read directly from the
NFS spool rather than from cached copies. You should only set this parameter if you
are attempting to use a shared NFS spool on a machine acting as a reader within a
cluster. This is a boolean value and the default is false.
nfsreaderdelay
If nfsreader is set, INN will use the value of nfsreaderdelay to delay the apparent
arrival time of articles to clients by this amount. Note that only answers to GROUP
and NEWNEWS commands are affected. This value should be tuned based on the NFS cache
timeouts locally. The default is "60", that is to say one minute.
nnrpdcheckart
Whether nnrpd should check the existence of an article before listing it as present in
response to an NNTP command (HDR, LISTGROUP, NEWNEWS, OVER, XPAT). The primary use of
this setting is to prevent nnrpd from returning information about articles which are
no longer present on the server but which still have overview data available.
Checking the existence of articles before returning overview information slows down
the overview commands, but reduces the number of "article is missing" errors seen by
the client. This is a boolean value and the default is true.
You may also want to see the groupexactcount parameter in readers.conf(5) which
controls the computing of the estimated article count returned in NNTP commands
(GROUP, LIST COUNTS, LISTGROUP).
nnrpdflags
When nnrpd(8) is spawned from innd(8), these flags are passed as arguments to the
nnrpd process. This setting does not affect instances of nnrpd that are started in
daemon mode, or instances that are started via another listener process such as
inetd(8) or xinetd(8). Shell quoting and metacharacters are not supported. This is a
string value and the default is unset.
nnrpdloadlimit
If set to a value other than "0", connections to nnrpd will be refused if the system
load average is higher than this value. The default value is "16".
noreader
Normally, innd(8) will fork a copy of nnrpd(8) for all incoming connections from hosts
not listed in incoming.conf. If this parameter is set to true, those connections will
instead be rejected with a 502 error code. This should be set to true for a transit-
only server that doesn't support readers, or if nnrpd is running in daemon mode or
being started out of inetd. This is a boolean value and the default is false.
readerswhenstopped
Whether to allow readers to connect even if the server is paused or throttled. This
is only applicable if nnrpd(8) is spawned from innd(8) rather than run out of inetd or
in daemon mode. This is a boolean value and the default is false.
readertrack
Whether to enable the tracking system for client behavior. Tracked information is
recorded to pathlog/tracklogs/log-ID, where ID is determined by nnrpd's PID and launch
time. Currently the information recorded includes initial connection and posting;
only information about clients listed in nnrpd.track is recorded. In addition, every
posted article will be saved in pathlog/trackposts/track.message-id, where message-id
is the message ID of the post. This is a boolean value and the default is false.
tradindexedmmap
Whether to attempt to mmap() tradindexed overviews articles. Setting this to true
will give better performance on most systems, but some systems have problems with
mmap(). If this is set to false, overviews will be read into memory before being sent
to readers. This is a boolean value and the default is true.
INN has optional support for generating keyword information automatically from article
body text and putting that information in overview for the use of clients that know to
look for it (HDR, OVER and XPAT commands). The following parameters control that feature,
which should be considered experimental. Its very simple text tokenization works only on
plain-text ASCII articles, and totally lacks of understanding of anything other than
English. Articles encoded in Base64 or Quoted-Printable, having a MIME structure, or
farther afield from English will have garbage in the generated Keywords header field.
This feature may be too slow if you're taking a substantial feed, and probably will not be
useful for the average news reader; enabling this is not recommended unless you have some
specific intention to take advantage of it.
keywords
Whether the keyword generation support should be enabled. This is a boolean value and
the default is false.
If an article already contains a Keywords header field, no keyword generation is done
and the original Keywords header field is kept untouched.
In order to use this feature, the regex library should be available and INN configured
with the --enable-keywords flag. Otherwise, no keywords will be generated, even
though this boolean value is set to true. You also have to add the Keywords header
field into the overview with extraoverviewadvertised or extraoverviewhidden.
keyartlimit
Articles larger than this value in bytes will not have keywords generated for them
(since it would take too long to do so). The default value is "100000" (approximately
100 KB).
keylimit
Maximum number of bytes allocated for keyword data. If there are more keywords than
will fit into this many bytes when separated by commas, the rest are discarded. The
default value is "512".
keymaxwords
Maximum number of keywords that will be generated for an article. (The keyword
generation code will attempt to discard "noise" words in English, so the number of
keywords actually written into the overview will usually be smaller than this even if
the maximum number of keywords is found.) The default value is "250".
Posting
These parameters are only used by nnrpd(8), inews(1), and other programs that accept or
generate postings. There are some special sets of settings that are broken out separately
after the initial alphabetized list.
addinjectiondate
Whether to add an Injection-Date header field to all local posts. This is a boolean
value and the default is true.
Note that no Injection-Date header fields will be added to local posts already
containing both a Message-ID header field and a Date header field. This is done in
conformance with standards, to help minimize the possibility of a loop in e-mail
gatewaying and ensure that a newly injected article is not treated as a new, separate
article in case of multiple injection of the same article to different injecting
agents.
addinjectionpostingaccount
Whether to add a posting-account attribute to the Injection-Info header field body to
all local posts giving the username assigned to the user at connection time or after
authentication. This is a boolean value and the default is false. There is no
intrinsic support for obfuscating the value. That has to be done with a user-written
Perl filter, if desired.
addinjectionpostinghost
Whether to add a posting-host attribute to the Injection-Info header field body to all
local posts giving an FQDN (when known, by reverse lookup of the client IP address)
and IP address of the system from which the post was received. This is a boolean
value and the default is true. Note that INN either does not add this attribute or
adds the name (when known) and IP address of the client. There is no intrinsic
support for obfuscating the name of the client. That has to be done with a user-
written Perl filter, if desired.
When this parameter is set to true, an FQDN (obtained by reverse lookup of the client
IP address or, if unknown, the IP address itself) of the client is also added to the
Path header field body, after the "!.POSTED" diagnostic.
checkincludedtext
Whether to check local postings for the ratio of new to quoted text and reject them if
that ratio is under 50%. Included text is recognized by looking for lines beginning
with ">", "|", or ":". This is a boolean value and the default is false.
complaints
The value of the mail-complaints-to attribute of the Injection-Info header field added
to all local posts. The default is the newsmaster's e-mail address. (If the
newsmaster, selected at configure time and defaulting to "usenet", doesn't contain
"@", the address will consist of the newsmaster, an "@", and the value of fromhost.)
fromhost
Contains a domain used to construct e-mail addresses. The address of the local news
administrator will be given as <user>@fromhost, where <user> is the newsmaster user
set at compile time ("usenet" by default). This setting will also be used by
mailpost(8) to fully qualify addresses and by inews(1) to generate the Sender header
field (and the From header field if missing). The value of the FROMHOST environment
variable, if set, overrides this setting. The default is the fully qualified domain
name of the local host.
localmaxartsize
The maximum article size (in bytes) for locally posted articles. Articles larger than
this will be rejected. A value of "0" allows any size of article, but note that nnrpd
and innd will crash if system memory is exceeded. See also maxartsize, which applies
to all articles including those posted locally. The default value is "1000000"
(approximately 1 MB).
moderatormailer
The address to which to send submissions for moderated groups. It is only used if the
moderators file doesn't exist, or if the moderated group to which an article is posted
is not matched by any entry in that file, and takes the same form as an entry in the
moderators file. In most cases, "%s@moderators.isc.org" is a good value for this
parameter ("%s" is expanded into a form of the newsgroup name). See moderators(5) for
more details about the syntax. The default is unset. If this parameter isn't set and
an article is posted to a moderated group that does not have a matching entry in the
moderators file, the posting will be rejected with an error.
nnrpdauthsender
Whether to generate a Sender header field based on reader authentication. If this
parameter is set, a Sender header field will be added to local posts containing the
identity assigned by readers.conf. If the assigned identity does not include an "@",
the reader's hostname is used. If this parameter is set but no identity is assigned,
the Sender header field will be removed from all posts even if the poster includes
one. This is a boolean value and the default is false.
nnrpdposthost
If set, nnrpd(8) and rnews(1) will pass all locally posted articles to the specified
host rather than trying to inject them locally. See also nnrpdpostport. This should
always be set if xrefslave is true. The default value is unset.
nnrpdpostport
The port on the remote server to connect to to post when nnrpdposthost is used. The
default value is "119".
organization
What to put in the Organization header field body if it is left blank by the poster.
The value of the ORGANIZATION environment variable, if set, overrides this setting.
The default is unset, which tells INN not to insert an Organization header field.
spoolfirst
If true, nnrpd(8) will spool new articles rather than attempting to send them to
innd(8). If false, nnrpd will spool articles only if it receives an error trying to
send them to innd. Setting this to true can be useful if nnrpd must respond as fast
as possible to the client; however, when set, articles will not appear to readers
until they are given to innd. nnrpd won't do this; "rnews -U" must be run
periodically to take the spooled articles and post them. This is a boolean value and
the default is false.
strippostcc
Whether to strip To, Cc, and Bcc header fields out of all local posts via nnrpd(8).
The primary purpose of this setting is to prevent abuse of the news server by posting
to a moderated group and including To or Cc header fields in the post so that the news
server will send the article to arbitrary addresses. INN now protects against this
abuse in other ways provided mta is set to a command that includes "%s" and honors it,
so this is generally no longer needed. This is a boolean value and the default is
false.
nnrpd(8) has support for controlling high-volume posters via an exponential backoff
algorithm, as configured by the following parameters.
Exponential posting backoff works as follows: news clients are indexed by IP address (or
username, see backoffauth below). Each time a post is received from an IP address, the
time of posting is stored (along with the previous sleep time, see below). After a
configurable number of posts in a configurable period of time, nnrpd(8) will begin to
sleep for increasing periods of time before actually posting anything (posting backoff is
therefore activated). Posts will still be accepted, but at an increasingly reduced rate.
After backoff has been activated, the length of time to sleep is computed based on the
difference in time between the last posting and the current posting. If this difference
is less than backoffpostfast, the new sleep time will be 1 + (previous sleep time *
backoffk). If this difference is less than backoffpostslow but greater than
backoffpostfast, then the new sleep time will equal the previous sleep time. If this
difference is greater than backoffpostslow, the new sleep time is zero and posting backoff
is deactivated for this poster. (Note that this does not mean posting backoff cannot be
reactivated later in the session.)
Exponential posting backoff will not be enabled unless backoffdb is set and
backoffpostfast and backoffpostslow are set to something other than their default values.
Here are the parameters that control exponential posting backoff:
backoffauth
Whether to index posting backoffs by user rather than by source IP address. You must
be using authentication in nnrpd(8) for a value of true to have any meaning. This is
a boolean value and the default is false.
backoffdb
The path to a directory, writeable by the news user, that will contain the backoff
database. There is no default for this parameter; you must provide a path to a
creatable or writeable directory to enable exponential backoff.
backoffk
The amount to multiply the previous sleep time by if the user is still posting too
quickly. A value of "2" will double the sleep time for each excessive post. The
default value is "1".
backoffpostfast
Postings from the same identity that arrive in less than this amount of time (in
seconds) will trigger increasing sleep time in the backoff algorithm. The default
value is "0".
backoffpostslow
Postings from the same identity that arrive in greater than this amount of time (in
seconds) will reset the backoff algorithm. Another way to look at this constant is to
realize that posters will be allowed to generate at most 86400/backoffpostslow posts
per day. The default value is "1".
backofftrigger
This many postings are allowed before the backoff algorithm is triggered. The default
value is "10000".
TLS/SSL Support for Reading and Posting
Here are the parameters used by nnrpd(8) to provide TLS/SSL support.
The parameters related to certificates are:
tlscafile
The path to a file containing certificate authority root certificates, used to present
a trust chain to a TLS client. This parameter is only used if nnrpd is built with
TLS/SSL support. The default value is an empty string.
tlscapath
The path to a directory containing certificate authority root certificates. Each file
in the directory should contain one CA certificate, and the name of the file should be
the CA subject name hash value. See the OpenSSL documentation for more information.
This parameter is only used if nnrpd is built with TLS/SSL support. The default value
is pathetc.
tlscertfile
The path to a file containing the server certificate to present to TLS clients. This
parameter is only used if nnrpd is built with TLS/SSL support. The default value is
pathetc/cert.pem.
If you want to use a complete certificate chain, you can directly put it in
tlscertfile (like Apache's SSLCertificateFile directive). Alternately, you can put a
single certificate in tlscertfile and use tlscafile for additional certificates needed
to complete the chain, like a separate authority root certificate.
More concretely, when using Let's Encrypt certificates, Certbot's files can be
installed as follows:
tlscapath: /etc/letsencrypt/live/news.server.com
tlscertfile: /etc/letsencrypt/live/news.server.com/fullchain.pem
tlskeyfile: /etc/letsencrypt/live/news.server.com/privkey.pem
or:
tlscapath: /etc/letsencrypt/live/news.server.com
tlscafile: /etc/letsencrypt/live/news.server.com/chain.pem
tlscertfile: /etc/letsencrypt/live/news.server.com/cert.pem
tlskeyfile: /etc/letsencrypt/live/news.server.com/privkey.pem
Make sure that the permission rights are properly set so that the news user or the
news group can read these directories and files (typically, he should access
/etc/letsencrypt/live/news.server.com and /etc/letsencrypt/archive/news.server.com
where the real keys are located, and the private key should not be world-readable).
If you prefer to point to files outside the directory of Let's Encrypt, you may add a
post-renewal hook for Let's Encrypt to copy the generated files to another location,
and give them the expected rights.
tlskeyfile
The path to a file containing the encryption key for the server certificate named in
tlscertfile. This may be the same as tlscertfile if, when you created the
certificate, you put the key in the same file (if, for example, you gave the same file
name to both the -out and -keyout options to "openssl req"). This parameter is only
used if nnrpd is built with TLS/SSL support. The default value is pathetc/key.pem.
This file must only be readable by the news user or nnrpd will refuse to use it.
Finally, here are the parameters that can be used to tighten the level of security
provided by TLS/SSL in case new attacks exploitable in NNTP on the TLS protocol or some
supported cipher suite are discovered:
tlsciphers
The string describing the cipher suites OpenSSL will support for TLS 1.2 and below.
See OpenSSL's ciphers(1) command documentation for details. The default is unset,
which uses OpenSSL's default cipher suite list.
tlsciphers13
The string describing the cipher suites OpenSSL will support for TLS 1.3. See
OpenSSL's ciphers(1) command documentation for details. The default is unset, which
uses OpenSSL's default cipher suite list.
Note that a separate cipher suite configuration parameter is needed for TLS 1.3
because TLS 1.3 cipher suites are not compatible with TLS 1.2, and vice-versa. In
order to avoid issues where legacy TLS 1.2 cipher suite configuration configured in
the tlsciphers parameter would inadvertently disable all TLS 1.3 cipher suites, the
inn.conf configuration has been separated out.
tlscompression
Whether to enable or disable TLS/SSL-level compression support, if the negotiated
protocol supports it (notably, TLS 1.3 no longer supports it). This is a boolean and
the default is false, that is to say compression is disabled, so as to follow the best
current practices for a secure use of TLS in application protocols (see RFC 8143 for
NNTP).
Note that enabling TLS/SSL-level compression will be possible only if the OpenSSL
library INN has been built with, supports that feature.
tlseccurve
The name of the elliptic curve to use for ephemeral key exchanges. To see the list of
curves supported by OpenSSL, use "openssl ecparam -list_curves".
The default is unset, which means an appropriate curve is auto-selected (if your
OpenSSL version is at least 1.0.2 or you are using LibreSSL) or the NIST P-256 curve
is used.
This option is only effective if your OpenSSL version has ECDH support.
tlspreferserverciphers
Whether to let the client or the server decide the preferred cipher suite, signature
algorithm or elliptic curve to use for an incoming connection. This is a boolean and
the default is true, that is to say the server will choose following its own
preferences.
tlsprotocols
The list of TLS/SSL protocol versions to support. Valid protocols are SSLv2, SSLv3,
TLSv1, TLSv1.1, TLSv1.2 and TLSv1.3. The default value is to only allow secure TLS
protocols:
tlsprotocols: [ TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3 ]
Note that the listed protocols will be enabled only if the OpenSSL library INN has
been built with, supports them. In case OpenSSL supports protocols more recent than
TLSv1.3, they will be automatically enabled (which anyway is fine regarding security,
as newer protocols are supposed to be more secure).
"SSLv2" was formally deprecated by RFC 6176 in 2011, "SSLv3" by RFC 7568 in 2015,
"TLSv1.0" and "TLSv1.1" by RFC 8996 in 2021.
Monitoring
These parameters control the behavior of innwatch(8), the program that monitors INN and
informs the news administrator if anything goes wrong with it.
doinnwatch
Whether to start innwatch(8) from rc.news. This is a boolean value, and the default
is true.
innwatchbatchspace
Free space in pathoutgoing, in inndf(8) output units (normally kilobytes), at which
innd(8) will be throttled by innwatch(8), assuming a default innwatch.ctl. The
default value is "4000".
innwatchlibspace
Free space in pathdb, in inndf(8) output units (normally kilobytes), at which innd(8)
will be throttled by innwatch(8), assuming a default innwatch.ctl. The default value
is "25000".
innwatchloload
Load average times 100 at which innd(8) will be restarted by innwatch(8) (undoing a
previous pause or throttle), assuming a default innwatch.ctl. The default value is
"1000" (that is, a load average of 10.00).
innwatchhiload
Load average times 100 at which innd(8) will be throttled by innwatch(8), assuming a
default innwatch.ctl. The default value is "2000" (that is, a load average of 20.00).
innwatchpauseload
Load average times 100 at which innd(8) will be paused by innwatch(8), assuming a
default innwatch.ctl. The default value is "1500" (that is, a load average of 15.00).
innwatchsleeptime
How long (in seconds) innwatch(8) will sleep between each check of INN. The default
value is "600".
innwatchspoolnodes
Free inodes in patharticles at which innd(8) will be throttled by innwatch(8),
assuming a default innwatch.ctl. The default value is "200".
innwatchspoolspace
Free space in patharticles and pathoverview, in inndf(8) output units (normally
kilobytes), at which innd(8) will be throttled by innwatch(8), assuming a default
innwatch.ctl. The default value is "25000".
Logging
These parameters control what information INN logs.
docnfsstat
Whether to start cnfsstat(8) when innd(8) is started. cnfsstat will log the status of
all CNFS cycbuffs to syslog on a periodic basis (frequency is the default for
"cnfsstat -l", currently 600 seconds). This is a boolean value and the default is
false.
htmlstatus
Whether innd should write the status report as HTML file or in plain text. The HTML
status file goes to pathhttp/inn_status.html, while the plain text status file is
written to pathlog/inn.status. This is a boolean value and the default is true (an
HTML status file is written). Also see the status parameter.
incominglogfrequency
How many articles to process on an incoming channel before logging the activity. The
default value is "200".
logartsize
Whether the size of accepted articles (in bytes) should be written to the article log
file. This is useful for flow rate statistics and is recommended. This is a boolean
value and the default is true.
logcancelcomm
Set this to true to log "ctlinnd cancel" commands to syslog. This is a boolean value
and the default is false.
logcycles
How many old logs scanlogs(8) keeps. scanlogs(8) is generally run by news.daily(8)
and will archive compressed copies of this many days worth of old logs. The default
value is "3".
logipaddr
Whether the verified name of the remote feeding host should be logged to the article
log for incoming articles rather than the last entry in the Path header field body.
The only reason to ever set this to false is due to some interactions with newsfeeds
flags; see newsfeeds(5) for more information. This is a boolean value and the default
is true.
logsitename
Whether the names of the sites to which accepted articles will be sent should be put
into the article log file. This is useful for debugging and statistics. This is a
boolean value and the default is true.
logstatus
Whether innd should write a shortened version of its status report to syslog every
status seconds. This is a boolean value and the default is true. If set to true, see
the status parameter for more details on how to enable status reporting.
logtrash
Whether innd should add a line in the news log file to report unwanted newsgroups
(that is to say newsgroups not locally carried by the news server). This is a boolean
value and the default is true. It may be useful to set it to false when wanttrash is
set to true.
nnrpdoverstats
Whether nnrpd overview statistics should be logged via syslog. This can be useful for
measuring overview performance. This is a boolean value and the default is true.
nntplinklog
Whether to put the storage API token for accepted articles (used by nntplink) in the
article log. This is a boolean value and the default is false.
stathist
Where to write history statistics for analysis with contrib/stathist; this can be
modified with ctlinnd(8) while innd is running. Logging does not occur unless a path
is given, and there is no default value.
status
How frequently (in seconds) innd(8) should write out a status report. The report is
written to pathhttp/inn_status.html or pathlog/inn.status depending on the value of
htmlstatus. If this is set to "0" or "false", status reporting is disabled. The
default value is "600" (that is to say reports are written every 10 minutes).
timer
How frequently (in seconds) innd(8) should report performance timings to syslog. If
this is set to "0", performance timing is disabled. Enabling this is highly
recommended, and innreport(8) can produce a nice summary of the timings. If set to
"0", performance timings in nnrpd(8) are also disabled, although nnrpd always reports
statistics on exit and therefore any non-zero value is equivalent for it. The default
value is "600" (that is to say performance timings are reported every 10 minutes).
System Tuning
The following parameters can be modified to tune the low-level operation of INN. In
general, you shouldn't need to modify any of them except possibly rlimitnofile unless the
server is having difficulty.
badiocount
How many read or write failures until a channel is put to sleep or closed. The
default value is "5".
blockbackoff
Each time an attempted write returns EAGAIN or EWOULDBLOCK, innd(8) will wait for an
increasing number of seconds before trying it again. This is the multiplier for the
sleep time. If you're having trouble with channel feeds not keeping up, it may be
good to change this value to "2" or "3", since then when the channel fills INN will
try again in a couple of seconds rather than waiting two minutes. The default value
is "120".
chaninacttime
The time (in seconds) to wait between noticing inactive channels. The default value
is "600".
chanretrytime
How many seconds to wait before a channel restarts. The default value is "300".
datamovethreshold
The threshold for deciding whether to move already-read data to the top of buffer or
extend the buffer. The buffer described here is used for reading NNTP data.
Increasing this value may improve performance, but it should not be increased on
Systems with insufficient memory. Permitted values are between "0" and "1048576" (out
of range values are treated as "1048576") and the default value is "16384".
icdsynccount
How many article writes between updating the active and history files. The default
value is "10".
This is a trade-off between faster speed and more data loss if innd crashes (or the
system crashes, or loses power, etc.). The higher this parameter is, the less
frequent syncs are done. It is essentially the frequency of checkpoints: the maximum
number of articles that may be orphaned in case of a crash as they wouldn't have been
recorded in the history file. Besides, the missing updates to the active file would
cause other problems later, such as duplicate article numbers and corresponding errors
when storing new articles. (If innd has crashed, you can fix these errors by
rebuilding the history file and overview with makehistory(8). The active file will be
automatically be renumbered after that operation.)
keepmmappedthreshold
When using buffindexed, retrieving overview data (that is, responding to OVER or
running expireover) causes mmapping of all overview data blocks which include
requested overview data for newsgroup. But for high volume newsgroups like
control.cancel, this may cause too much mmapping at once leading to system resource
problems. To avoid this, if the amount to be mmapped exceeds keepmmappedthreshold (in
KB), buffindexed mmap's just one overview block (8 KB). This parameter is specific to
buffindexed overview storage method. The default value is "1024" (1 MB).
maxcmdreadsize
If set to anything other than "0", maximum buffer size (in bytes) for reading NNTP
command will have this value. It should not be large on systems which are slow to
process and store articles, as that would lead to innd(8) spending a long time on each
channel and keeping other channels waiting. The default value is BUFSIZ defined in
stdio.h (usually between "1024" and "8192" in most environments, see setbuf(3)).
maxforks
How many times to attempt a fork(2) before giving up. The default value is "10".
maxlisten
How many incoming connections can queue up in the listen backlog for innd, nnrpd and
two overview storage methods ("ovdb" and "ovsqlite"). The default value is "128" and
should be raised in case you notice that some connection requests get dropped.
nicekids
If set to anything other than "0", all child processes of innd(8) will have this
nice(2) value. This is usually used to give all child processes of innd(8) a lower
priority (higher nice value) so that innd(8) can get the lion's share of the CPU when
it needs it. The default value is "4".
nicenewnews
If set to anything greater than "0", all nnrpd(8) processes that receive and process a
NEWNEWS command will nice(2) themselves to this value (giving other nnrpd processes a
higher priority). The default value is "0". Note that this value will be ignored if
set to a lower value than nicennrpd (or nicekids if nnrpd(8) is spawned from innd(8)).
nicennrpd
If set to anything greater than "0", all nnrpd(8) processes will nice(2) themselves to
this value. This gives other news processes a higher priority and can help
overchan(8) keep up with incoming news (if that's the object, be sure overchan(8)
isn't also set to a lower priority via nicekids). The default value is "0", which
will cause nnrpd(8) processes spawned from innd(8) to use the value of nicekids, while
nnrpd(8) run as a daemon will use the system default priority. Note that for nnrpd(8)
processes spawned from innd(8), this value will be ignored if set to a value lower
than nicekids.
pauseretrytime
Wait for this many seconds before noticing inactive channels. Wait for this many
seconds before innd processes articles when it's paused or the number of channel write
failures exceeds badiocount. The default value is "300".
peertimeout
How long (in seconds) an innd(8) incoming channel may be inactive before innd closes
it. The default value is "3600" (an hour).
rlimitnofile
The maximum number of file descriptors that innd(8) or innfeed(8) can have open at
once. If innd(8) or innfeed(8) attempts to open more file descriptors than this
value, it is possible the program may throttle or otherwise malfunction or suffer
reduced functionality. The number of open file descriptors is roughly the maximum
number of incoming feeds and outgoing batches for innd(8) added to the number of
outgoing streams for innfeed(8) and, if you are using the tradindexed overview method,
the value of the overcachesize parameter. If rlimitnofile is set to a negative value,
the default limit of the operating system will be used; this will normally be adequate
on systems other than Solaris. Nearly all operating systems have some hard maximum
limit beyond which this value cannot be raised, usually either 256, 1024, or 65536.
The default value of this parameter is "-1".
Setting this parameter to "256" on Solaris systems is highly recommended for 32-bit
Solaris versions or 32-bit applications running on 64-bit Solaris, as well as 64-bit
Solaris versions prior to 11.0. See the Solaris documentation about file descriptors
<https://support.oracle.com/knowledge/Sun%20Microsystems/1005979_1.html> for more
details.
Note for expert users building INN from sources: if you need using more than
"FD_SETSIZE" file descriptors (as defined in the sys/select.h system header, usually
defaulting to 1024), you can increase this value for instance to "4096" by rebuilding
INN with the "-DLARGE_FD_SETSIZE=4096" option given to the compiler.
Paths Names
patharchive
Where to store archived news. The default value is pathspool/archive.
patharticles
The path to where the news articles are stored (for storage methods other than CNFS).
The default value is pathspool/articles.
pathbin
The path to the news binaries. The default value is pathnews/bin.
pathcontrol
The path to the files that handle control messages. The code for handling each
separate type of control message is located here. Be very careful what you put in
this directory with a name ending in ".pl", as it can potentially be a severe security
risk. The default value is pathbin/control.
pathdb
The path to the database files used and updated by the server (currently, active,
active.times, history and its indices, and newsgroups). The default value is
pathnews/db.
pathetc
The path to the news configuration files. The default value is pathnews/etc.
pathfilter
The path to the Perl and Python filters. The default value is pathbin/filter.
pathhttp
Where any HTML files (such as periodic status reports) are placed. If the news
reports should be available in real-time on the web, the files in this directory
should be served by a web server. The default value is the value of pathnews/http.
pathincoming
Location where incoming batched news is stored. The default value is
pathspool/incoming.
pathlog
Where the news log files are written. The default value is pathnews/log.
pathnews
The home directory of the news user and usually the root of the news hierarchy. There
is no default; this parameter must be set in inn.conf or INN will refuse to start.
pathoutgoing
Default location for outgoing feed files. The default value is pathspool/outgoing.
pathoverview
The path to news overview files. The default value is pathspool/overview.
pathrun
The path to files required while the server is running and run-time state information.
This includes lock files and the sockets for communicating with innd(8). This
directory and the control sockets in it should be protected from unprivileged users
other than the news user. The default value is pathnews/run.
pathspool
The root of the news spool hierarchy. This used mostly to set the defaults for other
parameters, and to determine the path to the backlog directory for innfeed(8). The
default value is pathnews/spool.
pathtmp
Where INN puts temporary files. For security reasons, this is not the same as the
system temporary files directory (INN creates a lot of temporary files with
predictable names and does not go to particularly great lengths to protect against
symlink attacks and the like; this is safe provided that normal users can't write into
its temporary directory). The default value is set at configure time and defaults to
pathnews/tmp.
EXAMPLE
Here is a very minimalist example that only sets those parameters that are required.
mta: "/usr/lib/sendmail -oi -oem %s"
ovmethod: tradindexed
pathhost: news.example.com
pathnews: /usr/local/news
hismethod: hisv6
For a more comprehensive example, see the sample inn.conf distributed with INN and
installed as a starting point; it contains all of the default values for reference.
HISTORY
Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews and since modified, updated,
and reorganized by innumerable other people.
SEE ALSO
inews(1), innd(8), innwatch(8), libinn_dbz(3), libinn_uwildmat(3), makehistory(8),
nnrpd(8), rnews(1).
Nearly every program in INN uses this file to one degree or another. The above are just
the major and most frequently mentioned ones.