Chapter 13 The Gui's - Windows NT, Windows 95, Macintosh

The Windows versions of dnews ship with the Dnewsman interface, the Macintosh version has a similar interface called the Tellnews Control. These are graphical interfaces that allow the user to control the dnews server including starting and stopping the dnews service

The DNEWS Manager allows easy setup and management of the news server. The following chapter describes what can be done from each dialogue.

The front dialogue is divided into two main areas, on the left options for configuring DNEWS and on the right options for controlling the running system and sending interactive commands to it.


Setup DNEWS Server - Configuration Options

Main Options

This dialogue covers the major settings in dnews.conf that need to be configured.

My IP Name

This is the ip name or number of your news server. It must be a working name or number which you could use to connect to your PC via FTP or TELNET. If you have multiple IP numbers then use the local ethernet IP number. If you use a name that doesn't work the status and other COMMANDS won't work. (and may lock up for extended periods when you try them)

Suck News From

This is the ip name or number of the server you are going to fetch news from. If your name server is flaky, or not always available (e.g. with RAS) then using the IP number can avoid lock ups. You need simple NEWS READER access to this machine.

If you are getting a full IHAVE feed from a site (e.g. they are pushing the news at you), then this item should be left blank.

Disk Space (MB)

DNEWS will try and keep it's disk usage below this setting. A value of 300 is good for about 200 users but it is dependent on their reading habits.

Manager Email

DNEWS will send you a daily report of the expire process. This should be a valid internet email address, e.g. joe@my.domain

Confirm Postings

DNEWS can send your users confirmation messages when the local postings are sent up stream, this setting lets you tell DNEWS who your users are (as it doesn't want to send confirms to every person on the internet who sends a message 'through' your machine. You must include a wild card (* character) in this. e.g. *this.domain. Note: *.this.domain would not match joe@this.domain whereas *this.domain will. (the extra full stop causes the problem)

If you run two domains you can give both domains separated by a comma, e.g.

*this.domain,*other.domain

Warn Info Debug Flush

The default logging level is 'info' If you experience crashes NetWin support staff will ask you to set the debugging level to FLUSH and then send the log file next time a crash occurs. The debugging level will slow down the server.

Try to translate IP numbers to Names

When a user connects DNEWS can try and translate the ip number (e.g. 161.203.12.5) into an ip name (e.g. pc1.my.domain) But this translation could lock up your server if your DNS is faulty (or if it can't be contacted for some reason) So you may want to stop DNEWS from doing this translation. However if you do this you must put ip numbers into access.conf (the user access file) because it will not be able to check the ip names.

Advanced…

This dialogue lets you modify advanced settings from dnews.conf
Advanced Settings Dialogue Box

Cached Life

The number of days that a group should remain 'cached' after it has been read by a user. When a group is 'cached' items will be fetched on the off chance someone will want to read them. This setting has nothing to do with how long items are stored for after they have been fetched, that is set in the configuration file expire.conf

Expire At

The time in hours and minutes that DNEWS should run it's automatic expire job. Either value can be a wild card or a list, so if the minutes were set to 15,45 then the expire would run at quarter to and quarter past the hour. If the hours were set to 3,20 then an expire job would run at quarter past 3 and quarter to 4 and quarter past 8p.m. and quarter to 9:00p.m.

Update At

How often DNEWS should fetch new articles, this is runs every 10 minutes by default. It would not hurt to decrease this to once per hour. e.g. minutes=15 hours=*

Rotate Log

The log files tend to grow very rapidly, in order to stop them getting too big they can be automatically rotated (deleted) every 'n' lines.

Config Files

This setting is where the config files are, don't play with this!

Spool Files

This setting is where the spool directory is, you may need to move the spool area to a larger disk if you want to have heaps of news. To do this:

stop the server

Move the spool tree using file manager

Change this setting using DNEWS Manager

Start the server

Cross your fingers :-)

Sucks

This dialogue is used to set up the site or sites that Dnews will suck from.


Multiple sucking feeds can be set by supplying a wild card of news groups to fetch for each sucking feed. The largest set should be the first in the list.

E.g.
suck1  main.news.site *
suck2  local.news.site secret.*

Feeds Out

This dialogue lets you modify the settings of the selected feed.

Users and Feeds In

This dialogue lets you control access to your server.

Each line in the access.conf file is checked when a connection is made, both ip numbers and names (if reverse dns translation is enabled) are matched to the first column. If a match occurs then the READ, POST, IHAVE and GROUP settings are then assigned to that user.

After connecting the user can then supply a username and password, when this happens the file is checked again, and the read,post,ihave and group settings are modified for that connection.

Note also, that every line in the file is matched, and the last match is used, so you have to put general settings at the top, and specific user settings near the end.

Here is an example of allowing a user to connect and then give user/passwords

*:logoff:::*
*:read,post:joe:joepassword:*
*.my.domain:read,post:::*

This will prevent the rest of the world from even connecting, while letting most people read and post mesages, Joe will be able to connect from any domain as long as he uses his username and password.

If you use the Netscape browser then there are limitations on how you can use this file, this is because netscape doesn't allow you to enter the username and password unless access is refused by the server. This isn't generally a problem but it can cause a problem if you want to have people from one domain connecting with and without passwords, this will not be possible via netscape, but will work with all other browsers.

Setup Wizard

This dialogue will step you through the basic DNEWS setup, it is intended to get the system running when the person answering the questions doesn't really know what they are doing :-)

It should only be run ONCE when you first install DNEWS as it may change settings which you have since modified.

1. Type the ip name or ip number of the machine that you are running dnews on in the available box and then click on the OK button.

2. If you want to set up a sucking feed click on the check box then the OK button, if you will be taking an Ihave feed, ensure that the box is not checked, then click on the OK button.

2a. If you checked the box to suck news then you'll need to set where news is to be sucked from, type in the ip name or the ip number of the site that is providing you with a sucking feed.

3. In this dialogue box you need to enter the name of your mail gateway, this may or may not be the machine which you are running dnews on. If this is the same machine you need to use the mail alias which will be different from the name that you set for the dnews machine in box 1. Type in the name and click the OK button.

4. Dnews produces a daily report supplying a number of statistics about what it has done over the preceding 24 hours, type the address of the person to mail these reports to into this dialogue box and click on OK.

5. Decide how much space to give dnews to store news on, for an Ihave feed with binaries groups 4000 to 10000Mb are needed, without the binaries groups 2000 to 4000Mb will be sufficient. With a sucking feed 200Mb is about the minimum required to accept a feed. If you are using Dnews as an intranet server and will have only local groups then as little as 30Mb may be enough.

6. When someone posts to a group dnews can send a confirmation that their post has been successful, type in the address range that dnews should send confirmations to. E.g. you@machine.your.domain will send confirmations to you only, *@machine.your.domain will send confirmations to anyone who posts from an account on the machine, *your.domain will send email confirmations to anyone who posts from that domain.

Type in the ip numbers of the people you want to allow to read news and click on OK.

Type in the ip names of the people you want to allow to read news and click on OK.


Write Changes

This button will write any changes you have made to your configuration files. If you don't press this button the changes will be lost.

WARNING: Generally you should make changes, then press "Write Changes" then press "Do Reload" to force the DNEWS server to reload it's configuration files.

Manage Server - Command Options

Stop Service

This button stops the DNEWS service (it will not work on Windows 95 or from a remote PC using a mapped drive, in those cases you should use the Commands dialogue, and send an EXIT command.

Start Service

This button attempts to start the DNEWS service, it will not work from a remote workstation using a mapped drive or on Netware or on Windows 95).

For Windows 95 you must start the service by double clicking on the dnews.exe icon.

For Netware you must load the NLM from the console (or with rconsole)

View Log

This button shows the last 100 odd lines of the dnews.log file. After starting the server you can use this button to find out when the server has actually finished it's initialization. Also in the event of any unexplained behavior you should check the log file.


Status

This buttons sends a 'status' command to the server and shows you the output, if it locks up doing this then you probably have a problem with your reverse name translation, which you can disable in the main setup dialogue.

Commands

This dialogue lets you send any of the builtin TELLNEWS commands to the server. If the command has parameters you will be prompted for them. You can use this to add new local news groups, or perform other strange and wonderful management tasks.

Do Reload

This button send DNEWS a reload command, this will make the server re read all it's configuration files, You need to press "Write Changes" before pressing the reload button.

WARNING: This button DOES NOT reload the configuration files into DNEWS Manager, if you change the files outside of DNEWS Manager then exit it and restart it to pickup your changes.

Config Files

This dialogue lets you tell DNEWS Manager where to find the DNEWS configuration files.

Use this if you are running DNEWS Manager from networked PC, first SHARE or MAP a drive to the disk where DNEWS.CONF and the dnews configuration files are stored, and then run DNEWS Manager and tell it which drive and directory to look in.

FEED Modify

This dialogue lets you modify the settings of the selected feed

Note the first FEED must be the ME feed. This is a dummy feed, which is actually used to check if incoming items match the list of news groups that you want.

If you change the ME feed you may have to send the TELLNEWS COMMANDS:

undelete *

matchfeed

Don't do this without first understanding what they mean :-) (see the manual)

Access Modify

This dialogue lets you modify the settings of the selected access line.

Read access lets users read news items

Post access lets users post news items

Ihave access lets an IHAVE feed come into your machine

Registering DNEWS.

To register to DNEWS click on the REGISTER button in DNEWSMAN and fill in the questions.


Alternatively you can use the TELLNEWS REGISTER command from a COMMAND SHELL. We do require payment before issuing a license key, you can make payment by giving credit card information with your registration. If you wish you can fax credit card information to us on +64 9 630 0689. Other forms of payment are also acceptable, Bank transfer, Cheque, Purchase Order etc.

After answering all the questions you can then start up your favourite email system, create a new message and then press SHIFT+INS to paste the registration form into the message.

Send the message to your local DNEWS reseller, or netwin@netwinsite.com in 24-48 hours your will receive a license key to fully enable dnews.

Entering your registration Key (when you get it via Email)

Enter the key with the tellnews key command or from the COMMANDS button on DNEWS Manager.

e.g.

         tellnews key a1b2c3d4e5

[return to index]