General Information

• The FTP site
• Why is a DNews dynamic sucking feed so great?
• Why is a DNews traditional IHAVE feed so great?
• Should I use the Dynamic Sucking Feed Option or traditional IHAVE Feed Option?
• Where are the log files?
• Where is dnews.conf?
• Where can I suck news from?
• Where can I get an IHAVE feed from?
• Local posts don't go upstream?

FTP Site

You can FTP the latest copy of the files from our main ftp site, there are binaries for common platforms (Windows NT (Intel & Alpha), Linux, Solaris, HPUX etc...

This is a self extracting archive, that means you just run/double click on the dnewsXXX.exe and it will extract itself , e.g.

dnews53c.exe (extracts the new files and installs/upgrades DNews on your system)

Use the following references to see our web pages and ftp area:

https://netwinsite.com/
ftp://ftp.netwinsite.com/pub/dnews

Why is a sucking feed so great?

A sucking feed has several advantages, not all obvious:

• Disk space and line usage - This is the most obvious advantage, you may only end up getting a couple of hundred groups, possibly saving 80% of your disk space and 80% of your network bandwidth. A 64Kbps line isn't enough to take a full news feed, but with a sucking feed it is easily enough to give the 'impression' of a full news feed.
• More items in 'low use' groups - More items in 'read' groups: As disk space is saved, it becomes very easy to keep 1 or 2 weeks of news (or more) in the groups people actually want. Most full feed systems can only store a few days of news in each group.
• Efficient file IO - As items are fetched for one group at a time, most file IO is to a single open file. This is a lot more efficient than the standard news system of getting items in a 'random' order. This efficiency is more significant on operating systems with slower file systems, e.g. Windows NT and VMS.
• Low impact on upstream site - DNews does not use the 'newnews' command which all news managers hate, it uses low impact commands to find the new messages and retrieve them without accessing the history database on the upstream server. As so much fewer articles are fetched the overall load is greatly reduced. The exact load depends on how many groups are being sucked.
• Easy configuration on upstream site - On the upstream site, instead of setting up and managing a feed, something which is difficult to do and tends to require almost constant maintenance, all that is required is to give your system simple 'news reader' access.

Why is a DNews traditional IHAVE feed so great?

There are two things that make DNews really great with a traditional IHAVE feed : Speed and Efficiency.

Speed: The advanced data base design (first introduced in DNews v4.0) allows DNews to take a feed several times faster than other news server software. So DNews can keep up with a true full feed with no difficulty whatsoever.

Efficiency: DNews is very efficient on resources, allowing it to serve more readers and downstream sites per $ invested in hardware and software. And spending a small fortune on high cost hardware is not an essential requirement.

Why are Speed and Efficiency so Important: Speed and Efficiency may once have been seen as nice features, today they are critical.With today's news volume and growth rates suggesting news volumes may well double in as little as 1-2 years, old server software is reaching the limits of its effectiveness. Many sites running older news servers are already struggling; to keep up with a full feed, maintain a reasonable history of news and serve their readers and downstream sites. Temporary solutions tend to have been a mix of adding expensive hardware, reducing news coverage from a full feed to a partial news feed, and reducing the number of days of news they keep. Upgrading to DNews allows these sites to provide a full news service, improve performance and avoid added expenditure on hardware.

Should I use the Dynamic Suck Feed or a traditional IHAVE Feed Option?

With the Dynamic Sucking Feed Option there comes a point of diminishing returns. As a rule of thumb if you have more than 3000 subscribers or plan on taking all the binary groups then a standard IHAVE feed may be more efficient. The number of groups and which groups users read determines the actual break-even point. So for example, if your users have similar interests and actively read less than about 1000 groups and binaries are not significant, a suck feed will generally offer advantages regardless of the number of users.

Remember DNews also works easily with a traditional IHAVE feed and will still beat the pants off most other news server software because its database is much faster at taking a feed and it is designed to make far more efficient use of your system resources.

Where are the log files?

Look in dnews.conf for the symbol LOG_DIR, this will tell you which directory to find them in. There are three files:

• dnews.log - The main log file
• dnews.in - A one line log of each message that came in
• dnews.out - A one line log of each item DNews sent out.

In debug mode all error messages are sent to the log file, in info mode only error,warn and info messages are printed. In warn mode only error and warn messages are sent, and in error mode only serious errors are printed to the log file.

Every night, or if the log files get more than DEBUG_ROTATE lines in them the files are rotated like this:

dnews.log -> dnews.log2 ->dnews.log3 ->dnews.log4 ->(deleted)

Where is dnews.conf?

This is the main configuration file, and you can't move it from its built-in directory which is:

• Windows NT - /winnt35/system32/dnews.conf (system dir)
• Unix - /etc/dnews.conf

All other configuration files will be in the config directory defined in dnews.conf

Where can I suck NEWS from?

• https://netwinsite.com/feeds.htm#suckfrom

Where can I get an IHAVE feed from?

• https://netwinsite.com/feeds.htm#ihavefrom

Local posts don't go upstream?

There are two main reasons for posts to fail:

1. You've messed up your newsfeeds.conf file.
2. Your provider is not allowing you to send messages via 'ihave'

Follow these instructions to figure out where the error is:

Post an item to some local TEST news group, e.g. nz.test, then check the file DNEWS.OUT, this should give one line per message sent 'out' of your system. If this file is empty or gives an error, first consider if the error is from DNews or if it is from the site you are sending items to. Second, look in dnews.log, search for "out:" once you've found the failure message you will probably find more clues just above or below it as to what went wrong.

Another common problem is sending the incoming feed back out to your provider, this clogs up your feed so that local posts almost never get sent. To confirm this problem look in the *.feed,*.send files in the workarea directory, if they contain message ID's that are not local then your EXCLUDE parameter in newsfeeds.conf needs adjusting.