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Vnews

Vnews is a powerful news program that provides news services on your Virtual Private Server. With Vnews, you can create local newsgroups, post to these newsgroups, and reply to posted messages.

NOTE: Vnews does not give access to the USENET newsfeed.

Installation

To install the Vnews software, connect to your server via Telnet or SSH, and issue these commands:

% vinstall vnews
% rehash

To make it easy for your users, we suggest creating a CNAME record to your DNS information, in order to keep with the normal standard of news.YOUR-DOMAIN.NAME.

Access

All those who wish to access a Vnews newsgroup must have a valid User Account on the Virtual Private Server. The user account username and password must be used for authentication each time the user accesses the news server. Vnews newsgroups can be accessed using an Internet news reader, such as:

Configure the Internet news reader to access your Virtual Private Server on port 119.

Management

We provide two ways to manage Vnews newsgroups.

  • vnews-setup - This is a simple utility that is run from the Unix command-line.

  • Vnews Newsgroup Manager - This user-friendly interface is accessed from your Web browser.

Customization

Vnews can be customized by making changes to the ~/etc/vnews.conf file. Use an online file editor, like pico, or transfer the file to your PC in order to edit the file. Be sure to download and upload the ~/etc/vnews.conf file in ASCII mode.

The format of the ~/etc/vnews.conf file is as follows.

  • At the beginning of the first line there will be the # symbol. This is called a comment. Placing a # in front of a line causes Vnews not to read the text that follows on that same line.

  • The lines without a # will be read and processed by Vnews. Make sure that these lines include valid commands. Usually a remark and explanation of these commands will appear on the following line.

You can enable Vnews logging by modifying the ~/etc/vnews.conf file. Remove the # character from the beginning of the following line.

#VNEWS_LOGFILE   /usr/log/vnews.log

If you want to change the name or location of the log file, change /usr/log/vnews.log to the name or location that you prefer.