NNTP server

["Mercator Trading" <jabal@mercatortrading.nl>]

Hi all,

I'm trying to install a NNTP news server on my OBSD 3.3 box. I've been on this
for the last tree days totaling an aprox. 30hrs and am developing some RSI
complaints. My first step was trying leafnode wich was available as an pkg on
the bsd mirrors. I installed it, configured it ... and discarded it ;-) It
seemed only to support USENET message relaying, of wich I am in no need. I
just want to have my own newsgroup available through restricted acces for
distant users. Leafnode doesn't support local newsgroups. Which was by the
way, to my own embarresment, clearly stated on the on-line FAQ. I consider it
a good lesson, but even a better practice.

Now I ran out of options, because leafnode was the only server available as
pkg. I've grep'd the ports index for INN, NNTP, news server, but no result. By
gooogling I've come up with ISC's InterNetNews (INN). ISC says that their
product is known to be running on OpenBSD. So I dl-ed the source, compiled,
installed and configured. All of that by extensively reading the INSTALL file
and it's leads (mostly man-pages). Everything seems ok until I arrive at the
next step:

>Next, you need to create an empty history database.  To do this, type:
>        cd ~news/db
>        touch history
>        makedbz -i

In this news/db dir there are the folowing files: active, active.times,
history(just touched), newsgroups
The thing is that I am not familiar with dbz, and neighter is my system. I
know dbm and makedbm, but these aren't the same. Gooogling led me to two leads
on manpages on dbz, but the only thing i could make out of that, was that the
syntax -i (ignore old db) is correct. I've included the History remark which
tells its a INN thing.

>Written  by Katsuhiro Kondou <kondou@nec.co.jp> for InterNetNews.  This is
revision 1.1, dated 1999/08/27.

Questions:
1. Who can help me on this dbz thing? the database obviously doesn't build on
makedbm.
2. Any suggestions on a NNTP server? I've noticed along the way that access
control on non domain distant users probably will be a problem.
3. INN comes with an integrated SSL aplication that needs the SSL headers to
be installed. Although I thougt OBSD was equiped with SSL, it only has libs.
Is it worth the trouble installing OpenSSL or could I use stunnel?

Kind regards,
Jasper

off-list: bsd@mercatortrading.nl