Re: How do I access newsgroups

["Binand Raj S." <binand@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Manoj Srivastava forced the electrons to say:
> Hi,
> >>"Binand" == Binand Raj S <binand@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> 
>  Binand> If you want to allow people to connect to VSNL's news server,
>  Binand> then just put the line
> 
>  Binand> export NNTPSERVER=news.vsnl.net.in
> 
>  Binand> in your /etc/profile file. If you want your machine to act as
>  Binand> a news server, then download the inn package and install it.
> 
>         That may not work for people using csh derived shells. On
>  Debian systems, set the correct server location in
>  /etc/news/server. That would work with any user shell, and any Debian
>  packaged newsreader.

That is true only for debian systems. My RH 5.2 system doesn't even have
a /etc/news/ directory. For csh derived shells, the correct line would be

setenv NNTPSERVER 'news.vsnl.net.in'

in the startup file (on my system, it is /etc/csh.cshrc). Also, according
to the newsreader, you can set your nntp server. My favourite newsreader,
slrn, looks for the file /etc/NNTPSERVER. I believe you can set this
up in netscape also. Then there are newsreader specific initialization
files. For slrn, it is ~/.slrnrc, for tin, it is ~/.tin/tinrc. For netscape,
you should look in Edit->Preferences->Somewhere.

Anyway, one should tell one's users the names of news servers available
to them, and let them choose the news server as well as the reader of
their choice. This should not be imposed on them. You should only tell them
how to set up their news reading software.

Regards,

Binand

PS: Is there anyone left on this list who boots his machine into runlevel
3 and uses Mutt/Lynx/Slrn/Vim?

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