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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.)
       If the value contains embedded whitespace or any of the characers
       "[]<""\:>, 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 parame‐
       ter.

       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 man‐
       ual 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 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.  As this parameter is rarely used, do
	   not use it to affect the righthand side of autogenerated Mes‐
	   sage-IDs; see instead virtualhost and domain in readers.conf.  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 nor‐
	   mally 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: head‐
	   ers 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, over‐
	   rides 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 set‐
	   ting.  The default value is unset.

       bindaddress6
	   Like bindaddress but for IPv6 sockets. If only one of the bindad‐
	   dress 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.

       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
	   system 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 News‐
	   groups: header.  If this parameter is set, the newsgroup affected
	   by the control message will be extracted from the Control: 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 news‐
	   feeds.  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
	   signature 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 arti‐
	   cles.

       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).  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 iden‐
	   tity 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, pgpv, or gpgv.

       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 "<can‐
	   cel.".  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 bool‐
	   ean 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
	   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, but not innfeed(8) -- see
	   bindaddress in innfeed.conf(5) for that).  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.

       sourceaddress6
	   Like sourceaddress but for IPv6 sockets.

       verifycancels
	   Set this to true to enable a simplistic check on all cancel mes‐
	   sages, attempting to verify (by simple header comparison) that the
	   cancel 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"
	   newsgroup 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.

       dontrejectfiltered
	   Normally innd(8) rejects incoming articles when directed to do so
	   by any enabled article filters (Perl, Python, and TCL).  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 speci‐
	   fied in newsfeeds with the "Af" flag.

       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 bool‐
	   ean 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 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 pseudonews‐
	   group "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 bool‐
	   ean 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 news‐
	   groups 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
	   newsgroups does not have self-expire functionality, storing over‐
	   view 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.

       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(3) 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.

       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 pri‐
	   mary 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.

       useoverchan
	   Whether to innd(8) should create overview data internally through
	   libstorage(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 begin‐
	   ning of lines doubled, the article format required by the NNTP pro‐
	   tocol.  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 gener‐
	   ally only have one upstream feed, and should always have nnr‐
	   pdposthost 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.

       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.

       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 a reader a
	   cluster.  This is a boolean value and the default is false.

       nfsreaderdelay
	   For servers reading articles, determine whether the article spool
	   is on NFS storage.  If nfsreader is set, INN will use the value of
	   nfsreaderdelay to delay the apparent arrival time of articles to
	   clients by this amount; this value should be tuned based on the NFS
	   cache timeouts locally.  This default is 60 (1 minute).

       msgidcachesize
	   How many cache slots to reserve for Message ID to storage token
	   translations.  When serving overview data to clients (NEWNEWS,
	   XOVER 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
	   10000.

       tradindexedmmap
	   Whether to attempt to mmap() tradindexed overviews articles.	 Set‐
	   ting 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.

       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 com‐
	   mand used to put a heavy load on the server in older versions of
	   INN, but is now reasonably efficient, at least if only one news‐
	   group 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 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 connec‐
	   tions, it may be a good idea to increase this value to 3600 (an
	   hour).  The default value is 600 (ten minutes).

       initialtimeout
	   How long (in seconds) nnrpd will wait for the first command from a
	   reader connection before dropping the connection.  This is a defen‐
	   sive 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.

       nnrpdcheckart
	   Whether nnrpd should check the existence of an article before list‐
	   ing 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 over‐
	   view commands, but reduces the number of "article is missing"
	   errors seen by the client.  This is a boolean value and the default
	   is true.

       nnrpperlauth
	   This parameter is now obsolete; see "Changes to Perl Authentication
	   Support for nnrpd" in doc/hook-perl.

       nnrppythonauth
	   This parameter is now obsolete; see "Changes to Python Authentica‐
	   tion and Access Control Support for nnrpd" in doc/hook-python.

       noreader
	   Normally, innd(8) will fork a copy of nnrpd(8) for all incoming
	   connections from hosts not listed in incoming.conf.	If this param‐
	   eter 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 informa‐
	   tion recorded includes initial connection and posting; only infor‐
	   mation about clients listed in nnrpd.track is recorded.  This is a
	   boolean value and the default is false.

       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.

       INN has optional support for generating keyword information automati‐
       cally from article body text and putting that information in overview
       for the use of clients that know to look for it.	 The following parame‐
       ters 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 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,
	   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 pro‐
       grams 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.  Note that INN
	   either does not add this header or adds the name or 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 fil‐
	   ter, if desired.

       addnntppostinghost
	   Whether to add an NNTP-Posting-Host: header to all local posts giv‐
	   ing 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.	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 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 mod‐
	   erators file.  In most cases, "%s@moderators.isc.org" is a good
	   value for this parameter (%s is expanded into a form of the news‐
	   group 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 authentica‐
	   tion.  If this parameter is set, a Sender: header will be added to
	   local posts containing the identity assigned by readers.conf.  If
	   the assigned identity does not include an "@", the reader's host‐
	   name is used.  If this parameter is set but no identity is be
	   assigned, 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.
	   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 nnr‐
	   pdposthost 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 expo‐
       nential 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 post‐
       ing backoff and begin to sleep for increasing periods of time before
       actually posting anything.  Posts will still be accepted, but at an
       increasingly reduced rate.

       After backoff has been activated, the length of time to sleep is com‐
       puted 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 backoffpost‐
       fast, 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 con‐
	   tain 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.

       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 800.

       innwatchlibspace
	   Free space in pathdb, in inndf(8) output units (normally kilo‐
	   bytes), 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
	   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 (frequency is the default for "cnfsstat -l", currently 600
	   seconds).  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
	   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 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
	   boolean 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.

       stathist
	   Where to write history statistics for analysis with con‐
	   trib/stathist.pl; 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.	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 tim‐
	   ings to syslog.  If this is set to 0, performance timing is dis‐
	   abled.  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 0.

       System Tuning

       The following parameters can be modified to tune the low-level opera‐
       tion 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 hav‐
	   ing 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.

       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 per‐
	   formance, but it should not be increased on Systems with insuffi‐
	   cient memory.  Permitted values are between 0 and 1048576 (out of
	   range values are treated as 1048576) and the default value is 8192.

       icdsynccount
	   How many article writes between updating the active and history
	   files.  The default value is 10.

       keepmmappedthreshold
	   When using buffindexed, retrieving overview data (that is, respond‐
	   ing to XOVER 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 keepmmappedthresh‐
	   old (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 (1024 in most environments, see setbuf(3)).

       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, 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 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/ar‐
	   chive.

       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 (cur‐
	   rently, 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 path‐
	   news/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 path‐
	   spool/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 path‐
	   news/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 par‐
	   ticularly 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.

       $Id: inn.conf.5 7471 2005-12-15 04:53:16Z eagle $

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 2.4.3			  2005-12-14			   INN.CONF(5)
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