DControl Manual

This manual contains information on installing, configuring and running DControl. It is assumed that you will have some experience with NNTP control messages. If not, it is recommended that you read and understand the following documents prior to installing and using DControl:

• How To Write a Good Newgroup Message
• RFC-1036 Standard for Interchange of USENET Messages

DControl is supplied as a ZIP archive, DControl.zip. To install DControl:

1. Create a target directory (e.g. "c:\dcontrol")
2. Unzip DControl.zip into the target directory

Note that if you want to use PGP authentication, you must have installed a version of PGP which runs from the command line, and added the public key of all users authorised to send control messages.

A version of PGP (which may not be suitable for users in the U.S.A.) can be obtained from ftp://ftp.no.pgpi.com/pub/pgp/2.x/pc/msdos/pgp263i.zip

Configuring DControl

DControl itself is almost entirely interactive. With the exception of the checkgroups command, all information is obtained from the user at runtime. However, if PGP authentication is being used, Signcontrol.ini will need to be edited.

The default Signcontrol.ini file contains:

pgp_path c:\pgp\pgp.exe sender UserID

Change the pgp_path value from 'c:\pgp\pgp.exe' to the pathname of the PGP executable on your machine. Then, change the sender value from 'UserID' to the PGP userid of the user who will be using DControl.

NOTE: Firstly, if the public key of the sender specified is unknown to the news server, no control messages will be actioned. Secondly, it is possible to hard-code additional flags into the pgp_path value.

Running DControl

As stated above, it is best to have an understanding of newgroup, rmgroup and checkgroups control messages prior to using DControl.

DControl allows the user to perform the following actions:

• Create a newsgroup
• Remove a newsgroup
• Check the newsgroups on the server

Having chosen from the above options, the user will be prompted for any information that is required, along with further explanation where necessary. Once the user has given DControl enough information to create a control message, DControl will perform the following steps:

1. Create a temporary file containing the message
2. If desired, sign the message using PGP
3. Send the message to the specified server

Note that it is possible to run Signcontrol independantly from DControl. This useage is not supported, however, as the Signcontrol program was designed to be called from DControl. For more information, see the documentation file Signcontrol.htm.