263 lines
5.4 KiB
HTML
263 lines
5.4 KiB
HTML
<HTML
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><HEAD
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><TITLE
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>Usenet news clients</TITLE
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NAME="GENERATOR"
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CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.76b+
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TITLE="Usenet News HOWTO "
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TITLE="Monitoring and administration"
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>Usenet News HOWTO</TH
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><H1
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CLASS="SECTION"
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><A
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NAME="AEN1208">11. Usenet news clients</H1
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><P
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>This HOWTO was written to allow a Linux system administrator provide the
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Usenet news service to readers of those articles. The rest of this HOWTO
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focuses on the server-end software and systems, but one chapter
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dedicated to the clients does not seem disproportionate, considering
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that the <EM
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>raison d'etre</EM
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> of Usenet news servers is to serve
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these clients.</P
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><P
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>The overwhelming majority of clients are software programs which access
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the article database, either by reading <TT
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CLASS="LITERAL"
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>/var/spool/news</TT
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> on a
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Unix system or over NNTP, and allow their human users to read and post
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articles. We can therefore probably term this class of programs UUA, for
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Usenet User Agents, along the lines of MUA for Mail User Agents.</P
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><P
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>There are other special-purpose clients, which either pull out
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articles to copy or transfer somewhere else, or for analysis,
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<EM
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>e.g.</EM
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> a search engine which allows you to search a
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Usenet article archive, like Google (<TT
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CLASS="LITERAL"
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>www.google.com</TT
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>)
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does.</P
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><P
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>This chapter will discuss issues in UUA software design, and bring out
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essential features and efficiency and management issues. What this
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chapter will certainly <EM
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>never</EM
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> attempt to do is catalogue all
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the different UUA programs available in the world --- that is best left to
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specialised catalogues on the Internet.</P
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><P
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>This chapter will also briefly cover special-purpose clients which
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transfer articles or do other special-purpose things with them.</P
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><DIV
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CLASS="SECTION"
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><H2
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CLASS="SECTION"
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><A
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NAME="AEN1220">11.1. Usenet User Agents</H2
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><DIV
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CLASS="SECTION"
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><H3
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CLASS="SECTION"
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><A
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NAME="AEN1222">11.1.1. Accessing articles: NNTP or spool area?</H3
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><P
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>TO BE ADDED LATER</P
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></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="SECTION"
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><H3
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CLASS="SECTION"
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><A
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NAME="AEN1225">11.1.2. Threading</H3
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><P
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>TO BE ADDED LATER</P
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></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="SECTION"
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><H3
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CLASS="SECTION"
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><A
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NAME="AEN1228">11.1.3. Quick reading features</H3
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><P
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>TO BE ADDED LATER</P
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></DIV
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></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="SECTION"
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><H2
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CLASS="SECTION"
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><A
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NAME="AEN1231">11.2. Clients that transfer articles</H2
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><P
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>We will discuss Suck and <TT
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CLASS="LITERAL"
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>nntpxfer</TT
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> from the NNTP server
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distribution here. Suck has already discussed earlier. We will be happy
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to take contributed additions that discuss other client software.</P
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></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="SECTION"
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><H2
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CLASS="SECTION"
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><A
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NAME="AEN1235">11.3. Special clients</H2
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><DIV
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CLASS="SECTION"
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><H3
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CLASS="SECTION"
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><A
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NAME="AEN1237">11.3.1. NNTPCache</H3
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><P
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>NNTPCache is an interesting transparent cacheing proxy for
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news articles. News articles are read-only by definition,
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<EM
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>i.e.</EM
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> they do not change once they are posted;
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they can only be deleted. NNTPCache uses this feature to build a
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local cache of news articles.</P
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><P
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>You set up NNTPCache to listen on the NNTP port of your local
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Unix server, and act like an NNTP daemon. You configure it to
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connect back-to-back to another NNTP daemon, further away, which has
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all the interesting stuff the users want to read. When a user
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connects to the local NNTPCache, it connects to the remote NNTP
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server and acts as a relay for the NNTP connection, ferrying
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commands and responses back and forth. What the user sees therefore
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comes from the remote server, the first time. However, all news
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articles fetched by NNTPCache are also stored in a local cache, thus
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allowing the next user to browse the same set of articles faster.
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Like all demand-driven caches, the advantage here is that the local
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NNTPCache does not need (much) administering, and will automatically
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delete all articles from its cache once they've been lying unread
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long enough.</P
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><P
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>We list it here as an NNTP client because every proxy server
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is a server on one side and a client on the other.</P
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></DIV
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></DIV
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></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="NAVFOOTER"
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><HR
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ALIGN="LEFT"
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WIDTH="100%"><TABLE
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SUMMARY="Footer navigation table"
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>Monitoring and administration</TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="34%"
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ALIGN="center"
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VALIGN="top"
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> </TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="33%"
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ALIGN="right"
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VALIGN="top"
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>Our perspective</TD
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> |