INN.CONF(5) InterNetNews Documentation INN.CONF(5)
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.) Everything after the colon and optional whitespace up to the end of
the line is taken as the value. Multi-word values should not be put in quotes; if they are, the quotes will be taken as part of the value,
not as delimiters. <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 environ-
ment variables. Most parameters have default values if not specified in inn.conf; those defaults are noted in the description of each
parameter.
For the time being, it is strongly recommended to include every parameter in inn.conf even if it is set to the default value, since some
shell scripts don't correctly handle missing keys that they care about. This is a difficult-to-fix bug in the current parser that will be
fixed in future versions of INN.
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 not 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.
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 GetFQDN() routine in libinn(3) cannot get the fully-qualified domain name by using either the gethostname(3) or
gethostbyname(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.
innflags
The flags to pass to innd on startup. See innd(8) for details on the possible flags. The default value is unset.
mailcmd
The path to the program to be used for mailing reports and control messages. The default is pathbin/innmail. This should not normally
need to be changed.
mta The command to use when mailing postings to moderators and for the use of innmail(1). The message, with headers and an added To:
header, will be piped into this program. The string %s, if present, will be replaced by the e-mail address of the moderator. It's
strongly recommended for this command to include %s on the command line rather than use the addresses in the To: and Cc: headers 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 behavior. 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) is a good choice.
pathhost
What to put into the Path: header to represent the local site. This is added to the Path: header 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.
server
The name of the default NNTP server. If nnrpdposthost is not set and UNIX domain sockets are not supported, nnrpd(8) tries to hand off
locally-posted articles through an INET domain socket to this server. actsync(8), nntpget(8), and getlist(8) 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.
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. This setting should probably match the setting on the "/remember/" line in
expire.ctl. The default value is 10.
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.
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. A good value for a sys-
tem with more than one incoming feed is 256; systems with only one incoming feed should probably leave this at 0. The default value is
0.
ignorenewsgroups
Whether newsgroup creation control messages (newgroup and rmgroup) should be fed as if they were posted to the newsgroup they are cre-
ating or deleting rather than to the newsgroups listed in the Newsgroups: header. If this parameter is set, the newsgroup affected by
the control message will be extracted from the Control: or Subject: header and the article will be fed as if its Newsgroups: header
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 of the article (if present) and
the artice is rejected if the values differ by more than this amount. A reasonable setting is 5, which is the standard maximum signa-
ture length plus one (some injection software calculates the Lines: header before adding the signature). The default value is 0, which
tells INN not to check the Lines: header 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.
The default value is 1000000 (approximately 1MB). 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 to the Path: header of accepted posts (before pathhost) if it doesn't already appear in the Path:
header. The main purpose of this parameter is to configure all news servers within a particular organization to add a common identity
string to the Path: header. The default value is unset.
pgpverify
Whether to enable PGP verification of control messages other than cancel. This is a boolean value and the default is based on whether
configure found pgp or pgpv.
port
What TCP port innd(8) should listen on. The default value is 119, the standard NNTP port.
refusecybercancels
Whether to refuse all articles whose message IDs start with "<cancel.". This message ID convention is widely followed by spam can-
cellers, so the vast majority of such articles will be cancels of spam. This check, if enabled, is done before the history check and
the message ID is not written to the history file. This is a boolean value and the default is false.
This is a somewhat messy, inefficient, and inexact way of refusing spam cancels. A much better way is to ask all of your upstream
peers to not send to you any articles with "cyberspam" in the Path: header (usually accomplished by having them mark "cyberspam" as an
alias for your machine in their feed configuration). The filtering enabled by this parameter is hard-coded; general filtering of mes-
sage IDs can be done via the embedded filtering support.
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 con-
sumed 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). This must be in dotted-quad
format (nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn). If set to "all" or not set, the operating system will choose the source IP address for outgoing connections.
The default value is unset.
usecontrolchan
Whether to handle control messages (other than cancel) in an external program rather than internally in innd(8). Enabling this is
highly recommended, as INN's internal control message handling can cause performance problems and behaves very poorly under heavy load.
If you want to enable this, you also must set up a channel feed to controlchan(8) in newsfeeds(5) and ensure that the group "con-
trol.cancel" exists on your server. You may also have to do a few additional things to allow controlchan to work correctly; see con-
trolchan(8) for the details. This is a boolean value and the default is false.
verifycancels
Set this to true to enable a simplistic check on all cancel messages, attempting to verify (by simple header comparison) that the can-
cel message is from the same person as the original post. This can't be done if the cancel arrives before the article does, and is
extremely easy to spoof. While this check may once have served a purpose, it's now essentially security via obscurity, commonly
avoided by abusers, and probably not useful. 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" news-
group rather than rejecting them. This is sometimes useful for a transit news server that needs to propagate articles in all news-
groups regardless if they're carried locally. This is a boolean value and the default is false.
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.
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.
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 effects 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. 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 "limit" 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 15 (which is probably way too low if you have a large
number of file descriptors available).
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 wildmat expressions.
Newsgroups not matching this setting may not be readable, and if groupbaseexpiry is set to true and the storage method for these news-
groups does not have self-expire functionality, storing overview data will fail. The default is unset.
ovmethod
Which overview storage method to use. Currently supported values are "tradindexed", "buffindexed", and "ovdb". There is no default
value; this parameter must be set if enableoverview is true (the default).
"buffindexed"
Stores overview data and index information into buffers, which are preconfigured files defined in buffinedexed.conf. "buffindexed"
never consumes additional disk space beyond that allocated to these buffers.
"tradindexed"
Uses two files per newsgroup, one containing the overview data and one containing the index. Fast for readers, but slow to write
to.
"ovdb"
Stores data into a Berkeley DB database. See the ovdb(5) man page.
storeonxref
If set to true, articles will be stored based on the newsgroup names in the Xref: header rather than in the Newsgroups: header. 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 con-
trol messages are posted to. This is a boolean value and the default is false.
useoverchan
Whether to create overview data innd(8) internally through libstorage(3). If set to false, innd create overview data by itself. If
set to true, innd does not create. In the case, you need to run overchan(8) by creating entry in newsfeeds(5). Setting to true may be
useful, if innd can not keep up with incoming feed and the bottle neck is creating 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
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 false.
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 of incoming articles and assigning the same article numbers to articles as was noted in the Xref:
header 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. This is a bool-
ean 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(5), 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 prob-
lems 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 false.
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 600 (ten minutes).
nnrpdcheckart
Whether nnrpd(8) should check the existence of an article before listing it as present in response to an NNTP command. 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 com-
mands, but reduces the number of "article is missing" errors seen by the client. This is a boolean value and the default is true.
nnrpperlauth
Whether to use the Perl hook in nnrpd(8) to authenticate readers. If this is enabled, normal readers.conf(5) authentication will not
be used, and instead the Perl hook will be called to authenticate connections. This is a boolean value and the default is false.
nnrppythonauth
Whether to use the Python hook in nnrpd(8) to authenticate readers. If this is enabled, normal readers.conf(5) authentication will not
be used, and instead the python hook will be called to authenticate connections. This is a boolean value and the default is false.
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, if nnrpd is being started out of inetd, or if nnrpd is run in daemon mode. 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 recoreded to pathlog/tracklogs/log-ID. ID is deter-
mined by nnrpd's PID and when nnrpd runs. Currenlty that information includes the messages which tell enabling reader track and where
posted article is tracked. Which user and client, that is recorded, is determined by nnrpd.track. See nnrpd.track(5) for more infor-
mation. This is a boolean value and the default is false.
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. The following parameters control that feature.
This 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.
FIXME: Currently, support for keyword generation is configured into INN semi-randomly (based on whether configure found the regex
library); it should be an option to configure and that option should be mentioned here.
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 100KB).
keylimit
Maximum number of bytes allocated for keyword data. If there are more keywords than will fit, separated by commas, into this many
bytes, 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,
so the number of keywords actually writen 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.
addnntppostingdate
Whether to add an NNTP-Posting-Date: header to all local posts. This is a boolean value and the default is true.
addnntppostinghost
Whether to add an NNTP-Posting-Host: header to all local posts giving the FQDN or IP address of the system from which the post was
received. This is a boolean value and the default is true.
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 rec-
ognized by looking for lines beginning with ">", "|", or ":". This is a boolean value and the default is false.
complaints
The value of the X-Complaints-To: header added to all local posts. The default is the newsmaster's e-mail address. (If the newsmas-
ter, selected at configure time and defaulting to "usenet", doesn't contain "@", the address will consist of the newsmaster, a "@", 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 (and From: header 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. Also see maxartsize.
The default value is 1000000 (approximately 1MB).
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 moder-
ated 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 modera-
tors 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 based on reader authentication. If this parameter is set, a Sender: header will be added to local
posts containing the authenticated user name and the reader's hostname. If this is enabled but authentication does not return a user-
name, the Sender: header 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.
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 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.
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: headers 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: headers 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 activate posting backoff and begin to sleep for increasing periods of time
before actually posting anything. Posts will still be accepted, but 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.
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 an existing and 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 post 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.
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, at which innd(8) will be throttled by innwatch(8), assuming a default
innwatch.ctl(5). The default value is 800.
innwatchlibspace
Free space in pathdb, in inndf(8) output units, at which innd(8) will be throttled by innwatch(8), assuming a default innwatch.ctl(5).
The default value is 25000.
innwatchloload
Load average times 100 at innd(8) will be restarted by innwatch(8) (undoing a previous pause or throttle), assuming a default
innwatch.ctl(5). The default value is 1000.
innwatchhiload
Load average times 100 at which innd(8) will be throttled by innwatch(8), assuming a default innwatch.ctl(5). The default value is
2000.
innwatchpauseload
Load average times 100 at which innd(8) will be paused by innwatch(8), assuming a default innwatch.ctl(5). The default value is 1500.
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(5). The default value
is 200.
innwatchspoolspace
Free space in patharticles and pathoverview, in inndf(8) output units, at which innd(8) will be throttled by innwatch(8), assuming a
default innwatch.ctl(5). The default value is 8000.
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.
This is a boolean value and the default is false.
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. The only reason to ever set this to false is due to some interactions with newsfeeds flags; see news-
feeds(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 and can be used by newsrequeue(8). This is a boolean value and the default is true.
nnrpdoverstats
Whether nnrpd overview statistics should be logged via syslog. This can be useful for measuring overview performance. This is a bool-
ean value and the default is false.
nntpactsync
How many articles to process on an incoming channel before logging the activity. The default value is 200.
FIXME: This is a rather unintuitive name for this parameter.
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.
status
How frequently (in seconds) innd(8) should write out a status report. The report is written to pathhttp/inn_status.html. If this is
set to 0 or "false", status reporting is disabled. The default value is 0.
timer
How frequently (in seconds) innd(8) should report performance timings to syslog. If this is set to 0 or "false", performance timing is
disabled. Enabling this is highly recommended, and innreport(8) can produce a nice summary of the timings. The default value is 0.
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 min-
utes. 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.
icdsynccount
How many article writes between updating the active and history files. The default value is 10.
maxforks
How many times to attempt a fork(2) before giving up. The default value is 10.
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(1) 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 and nnrpd(8) run as a daemon to 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 article when it's
paused or the number of channel write failure 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 suffer reduced functionality. The number
of open file descriptors is roughly the maximum number of incoming feeds and outgoing batches for innd(8) and the number of outgoing
streams for innfeed(8). If this parameter 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 128, 256, or 1024. The default value of this parameter is -1. Setting it to 256 on Solaris
systems is highly recommended.
Paths and File 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/spool.
pathbin
The path to the news binaries. The default value is pathnews/bin.
pathcontrol
The path to the files that handle control messages. If you are using controlchan(8) (usecontrolchan is set), the code for handling
each separate type of control message is located here. If you are using INN's built-in control message handling, each executable file
in this directory represents a handler for the Control: message with the same name as that file. Be very careful what you put in this
directory executable, 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 news-
groups). 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, Tcl, 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 pathlog.
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). It must be on the same partition as pathin-
coming for rnews(1) to work correctly. 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
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.
$Id: inn.conf.5,v 1.86.2.11 2002/09/08 18:08:17 vinocur Exp $
SEE ALSO
inews(1), innd(8), innwatch(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.
INN 2.3 2002-09-08 INN.CONF(5)