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

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

Installation

Do the following, according to your Virtual Private Server O/S.

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

   % vinstall vnews
   % rehash

2. To make it easy for your users, we suggest creating a CNAME record to your DNS information, in order to keep with the normal standard of news.YOUR-DOMAIN.NAME. Please contact ITS Technical Support if you wish to add this CNAME to your account.

Access

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

• Microsoft Outlook Express (included with Internet Explorer)
• Netscape Communicator

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

Management

We provide two ways to manage Vnews newsgroups.

• vnews-setup
  This is a simple utility that is run from the Unix command-line.
• Vnews Newsgroup Manager
  This user-friendly interface is accessed from your own web browser.

Customization

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

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

• At the beginning of the first line there will be the # symbol. This is called a remark. Placing a # in front of a line causes Apache not to read the text that follows on that same line.
• The lines without a # will be read and processed by Apache. Make sure that these lines include valid commands. Usually a remark and explanation of these commands will appear on the following line.

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

#VNEWS_LOGFILE /usr/log/vnews.log

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

Please note: the information on this page applies to ITS web hosting plans. It may or may not apply to other environments. If you are looking for a feature described here, or better support from your hosting provider, please consider hosting your site with ITS!

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