Leafnode FAQ

Question

Q:

Leafnode does not compile on my Mac OS X system.

Answer 1

A:

Apple introduced Two-Level Namespace Executables with MacOS X 10.1. This change affects how the linker works, and the linker itself is driven by the libtool parts that ship with PCRE. libtool as of that version and up to version 1.4.2 does not yet support the new linker semantics of MacOS X 10.1, and the compile broke up to and including leafnode 1.9.27.

Since leafnode 1.9.28, the embedded pcre/ directory contains two changes to overcome these problems:

the embedded libtool parts in configureare patched to detect these new MacOS versions and pass appropriate options to the linker.
When leafnode uses the embedded libtool, it passes the --disable-shared option to PCRE's configure, which avoids this trouble with shared libraries and speeds up the build -- leafnode will links statically anyhow to avoid the PCRE installation. The file configure.gnu does that, and it will not get applied if you explicitly configure pcre/.

So, effectively, an update to leafnode 1.9.28 should fix this problem. If it does not, contact the leafnode mailing list.

Answer 2

A:

This means that your operating system is too old and lacks this symbol which is required by POSIX.

Answer 3

A:

Another common reason for the build to fail is that Leafnode depends on some system-specific information which is usually included in the sources of the kernel.

Unfortunately, some Linux distribution do not install kernel sources by default; therefore, compilation of Leafnode (and most other programs as well) will fail. The obvious solution is to install the kernel sources. On Linux, if the kernel sources are installed in /usr/src/linux-a.b.cc (with a.b.cc being the version number of your kernel), create a symlink to /usr/src/linux.

Answer 4

A:

There is a separate documentation file dedicated to this issue, how to obtain a hostname, and how to tell leafnode about it. Please see README-FQDN or README-FQDN.html for details.

Answer 5

A:

Leafnode 1.x does not support local newsgroups. Leafnode 2.x will do that.

Answer 6

A:

Wrap leafnode with an SSL wrapper:

Obtain stunnel version 3 and install it.
Create a certificate and save it to /etc/leafnode/stunnel.pem, see the stunnel documentation. Implications such as whether to use signed certificates are beyond the scope of this document.
Add a configuration to your inetd.conf, xinetd.conf or spawn a new tcpserver process as described in the INSTALL document; but instead of /usr/local/sbin/leafnode, you'll type
/usr/local/sbin/stunnel -f -p /etc/leafnode/stunnel.pem -l /usr/local/sbin/leafnode.

Answer 7

A:

Warning: SourceForge does not currently support the HEAD, STAT and BODY commands, so leafnode-1 is totally out of the play for now. leafnode-2 will work for lurking, but will likely be unable to post. Sourceforge are aware that we need these commands and will add them at a later time.

Obtain stunnel version 3 and install it.
Arrange for stunnel to be started at system boot time, try:
/usr/sbin/stunnel -c -d 127.0.0.1:563 -r nntp.sourceforge.net:563
Add
```
server = localhost
				    port = 563
				    username = YOUR_SF_LOGIN
				    password = TOP_SECRET
			    
```
to your /etc/leafnode/config.

Answer 8

A:

Netscape Communicator, Mozilla and derived products (Beonex) will by default generate the Message-ID from the domain part of your E-Mail address. However, if your address is that of a big freemailer site (hotmail.com, yahoo.com, gmx.de), this will lead to invalid Message-IDs.

To work around this, go to the Mail & Newsgroups settings and enclose your E-Mail addresses into double quote marks, like this:"matthias.andree@gmx.de"This will prevent your Netscape-based newsreader from generating the invalid Message-ID and leave the generation to leafnode.

Answer 9

A:

You may not have configured inetd or xinetd properly, or the corresponding super server is not running. Please review the installation instructions. See below for information specific to Red Hat.

To test the setup, try: telnet localhost 119. Leafnode should then reply with (on one line):

200 Leafnode NNTP Daemon, version 1.9.27.rel running at merlin.emma.line.org
				(my fqdn: merlin.emma.line.org)

Answer 10

A:

You are connecting from outside the same networks that your leafnode server is in. Leafnode by default refuses connections from outside your LAN to prevent your leafnode server from abuse should you forget to configure tcpd or make a mistake when writing your hosts.allow or hosts.deny files. Please see /etc/leafnode/config.example for the allowstrangers option and how to configure this option, and its requirements. YOU are responsible for the abuse of your server if this option is enabled, so only give access to people with static IP whom you trust.

If the clients are on dynamic IP, please use other methods of access instead, for instance SSH tunnels (which are also available on Windows, before you ask).

Answer 11

There are several reasons why this may be the case:

You did not read any pseudo articles with your news reader. Subscribe to some groups, enter them and read the leafnode placeholder article.
Your groupinfo file may be corrupt. Run fetchnews -f.
/var/spool/news may have wrong permissions. /var/spool/news and all its subdirectories should be owned by user and group news and have permissions drwxrwsr-x (02755).

Answer 12

Maybe your upstream server supports neither the XGTITLE news.group.name nor the LIST NEWSGROUPS news.group.name command.

In this case, add nodesc = 1 to the server entry in /etc/leafnode/config, as described in the leafnode(8) manual page and the /etc/leafnode/config.example file.

Answer 13

You have probably mixed old and new binaries. Check your inetd.conf or xinetd.conf configuration if they really point to the new binary.

Answer 14

An article that causes the interruption may contain three plus signs in a row (“+++”), which many modems interpret as the beginning of a command. You can change or disable this “escape” sequence. Consult your modem's manual, register S2 is a common place to configure this.

Answer 15

For security reasons, this is not possible.

However, there is a tool named “sudo” that allows a regular, unprivileged user to impersonate another user, and this can be used to enable a regular user to run fetchnews.

“sudo” is available from http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/.

If “sudo” is installed on your system, then run visudo as root and add this line:

username ALL = (news) NOPASSWD: /path/to/fetchnews

Remember to replace “username” and “/path/to/” with the user's login and the proper path to fetchnews.

Now, the user who has been enabled access to fetchnews can just type sudo -u news /path/to/fetchnews to run fetchnews.

Answer 16

Your news reader talks to leafnode via the NNTP protocol. This protocol provides no means for Leafnode to determine which newsgroups you are actually subscribe. Therefore, Leafnode assumes that a newsgroup that is not read for a certain time (which can be configured with the timeout_long parameter) is unsubscribed and will only stop retrieving articles in it after this time.

If you are impatient and want to stop retrieving articles from that group immediately, delete the corresponding file in the /var/spool/news/interesting.groups/ directory. The articles that are already in your spool are still subject to the regular texpire schedule, however.

Answer 17

Make sure that your newsreader issues GROUP or LIST ACTIVE commands for each of the groups it is subscribed to when checking for new news, so that leafnode can actually see which groups are interesting. For instance, a newsreader configured to read the whole active file with a LIST command may lose subscriptions for low-traffic groups. See also the Gnus FAQ below.

As a last resort, change your cron job or ip-up script to run fetchnews -n rather than just fetchnews.

Answer 18

If you are using filters, try the article_despite_filter option (introduced in leafnode v1.9.33).

If your upstream server does not support XOVER, try using as few of the maxage, maxlines, maxbytes, minlines, maxcrosspost options as possible.

Answer 19

Watch the fetchnews output for error messages, if you see a message such as Reading newsgroups descriptions failed: 501 bad command usage. then try adding nodesc = 1 blow the server=news.example.org line of the server that showed this error.

Answer 20

The backup software that you are using may not reset the atime after reading a file. Check if you can reconfigure it to reset the “atime”.

As a workaround, run texpire -f. This will expire articles somewhat earlier because expiry is then determined from the time the file was last modified, rather than when it was last accessed.

Answer 21

This may happen if texpire has been interrupted previously, crashed, some other application touched the spool or the spool is corrupt.

Answer 22

A:

Check the setting of gnus-read-active-file (you can use customize-variable to do that), it should be 'some or nil.

Answer 23

A:

To search news, older versions of Netscape needed a news server which supports the XPAT command. Leafnode-1 does not. If you want to use Netscape, you have to upgrade to version 4.5 and press the “options” button which appears in the “search messages” window. In the box which appears you have to select “on your local system”.

Answer 24

A:

This can be caused by a corrupted inbox file in Outlook Express. It is said to happen during the initial install of Internet Explorer. To fix this problem, go to “Add/Remove Programs”, choose “Internet Explorer”, then “Repair installation.”

Thanks to Jim Gifford who talked to Microsoft to find this solution.

Answer 25

A:

Either you have started the wrong version of tin (the one which tries to read news directly from the spool) or your groupinfo file is corrupt.

In the first case, simply invoke tin with the -r flag: tin -r. If this does not help, try to rebuild the groupinfo file by running fetchnews -f.

1.	Fetchnews does not fetch any articles.
	There are several reasons why this may be the case: You did not read any pseudo articles with your news reader. Subscribe to some groups, enter them and read the leafnode placeholder article. Your groupinfo file may be corrupt. Run `fetchnews -f`. `/var/spool/news` may have wrong permissions. `/var/spool/news` and all its subdirectories should be owned by user and group news and have permissions drwxrwsr-x (02755).
2.	Fetchnews has problems retrieving new newsgroups.
	Maybe your upstream server supports neither the XGTITLE news.group.name nor the LIST NEWSGROUPS news.group.name command. In this case, add `nodesc = 1` to the server entry in `/etc/leafnode/config`, as described in the leafnode(8) manual page and the `/etc/leafnode/config.example` file.
3.	Since the update, fetchnews does not post my new articles!
	You have probably mixed old and new binaries. Check your `inetd.conf` or `xinetd.conf` configuration if they really point to the new binary.
4.	While fetchnews is running, my modem hangs up.
	An article that causes the interruption may contain three plus signs in a row (“+++”), which many modems interpret as the beginning of a command. You can change or disable this “escape” sequence. Consult your modem's manual, register S2 is a common place to configure this.
5.	How can I run fetchnews as regular user (not root)?
	For security reasons, this is not possible. However, there is a tool named “sudo” that allows a regular, unprivileged user to impersonate another user, and this can be used to enable a regular user to run fetchnews. “sudo” is available from http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/. If “sudo” is installed on your system, then run `visudo` as root and add this line: username ALL = (news) NOPASSWD: /path/to/fetchnews Remember to replace “username” and “/path/to/” with the user's login and the proper path to fetchnews. Now, the user who has been enabled access to fetchnews can just type `sudo -u news /path/to/fetchnews` to run fetchnews.
6.	I have unsubscribed from a newsgroup, but fetchnews still pulls articles for that group.
	Your news reader talks to leafnode via the NNTP protocol. This protocol provides no means for Leafnode to determine which newsgroups you are actually subscribe. Therefore, Leafnode assumes that a newsgroup that is not read for a certain time (which can be configured with the `timeout_long` parameter) is unsubscribed and will only stop retrieving articles in it after this time. If you are impatient and want to stop retrieving articles from that group immediately, delete the corresponding file in the `/var/spool/news/interesting.groups/` directory. The articles that are already in your spool are still subject to the regular texpire schedule, however.
7.	How do I stop fetchnews from unsubscribing from newsgroups?
	Make sure that your newsreader issues GROUP or LIST ACTIVE commands for each of the groups it is subscribed to when checking for new news, so that leafnode can actually see which groups are interesting. For instance, a newsreader configured to read the whole active file with a LIST command may lose subscriptions for low-traffic groups. See also the Gnus FAQ below. As a last resort, change your cron job or ip-up script to run `fetchnews -n` rather than just `fetchnews`.
8.	fetchnews is slow, how do I speed it up?
	If you are using filters, try the article_despite_filter option (introduced in leafnode v1.9.33). If your upstream server does not support XOVER, try using as few of the maxage, maxlines, maxbytes, minlines, maxcrosspost options as possible.
9.	fetchnews keeps downloading the full newsgroup list every time it runs
	Watch the fetchnews output for error messages, if you see a message such as `Reading newsgroups descriptions failed: 501 bad command usage.` then try adding `nodesc = 1` blow the server=news.example.org line of the server that showed this error.

Leafnode FAQ

Dr. Cornelius Krasel

Matthias Andree

Leafnode frequently asked questions, with answers.

Installation problems

Configuration problems

Problems at run time

leafnode (the NNTP server)

fetchnews

texpire

Problems with particular newsreaders

Obtaining a stack backtrace

From a core file.

Running a program under gdb supervision.

From a running/hanging leafnode program.

Red Hat and the inetd vs. xinetd issue.

William Hooper

Q:	Leafnode does not compile on my Mac OS X system.
A:	Apple introduced Two-Level Namespace Executables with MacOS X 10.1. This change affects how the linker works, and the linker itself is driven by the libtool parts that ship with PCRE. libtool as of that version and up to version 1.4.2 does not yet support the new linker semantics of MacOS X 10.1, and the compile broke up to and including leafnode 1.9.27. Since leafnode 1.9.28, the embedded `pcre/` directory contains two changes to overcome these problems: the embedded libtool parts in `configure`are patched to detect these new MacOS versions and pass appropriate options to the linker. When leafnode uses the embedded libtool, it passes the `--disable-shared` option to PCRE's `configure`, which avoids this trouble with shared libraries and speeds up the build -- leafnode will links statically anyhow to avoid the PCRE installation. The file `configure.gnu` does that, and it will not get applied if you explicitly configure `pcre/`. So, effectively, an update to leafnode 1.9.28 should fix this problem. If it does not, contact the leafnode mailing list.
Q:	Compiling causes a message 'SA_RESETHAND undeclared'!
A:	This means that your operating system is too old and lacks this symbol which is required by POSIX.
Q:	I cannot compile leafnode on Linux!
A:	Another common reason for the build to fail is that Leafnode depends on some system-specific information which is usually included in the sources of the kernel. Unfortunately, some Linux distribution do not install kernel sources by default; therefore, compilation of Leafnode (and most other programs as well) will fail. The obvious solution is to install the kernel sources. On Linux, if the kernel sources are installed in `/usr/src/linux-a.b.cc` (with a.b.cc being the version number of your kernel), create a symlink to `/usr/src/linux`.

Q:	Leafnode refuses to start and tells things about my hostname!
A:	There is a separate documentation file dedicated to this issue, how to obtain a hostname, and how to tell leafnode about it. Please see `README-FQDN` or `README-FQDN.html` for details.
Q:	Does leafnode support local newsgroups?
A:	Leafnode 1.x does not support local newsgroups. Leafnode 2.x will do that.
Q:	How do I run leafnode as NNTP+SSL server?
A:	Wrap leafnode with an SSL wrapper: Obtain stunnel version 3 and install it. Create a certificate and save it to `/etc/leafnode/stunnel.pem`, see the stunnel documentation. Implications such as whether to use signed certificates are beyond the scope of this document. Add a configuration to your inetd.conf, xinetd.conf or spawn a new tcpserver process as described in the `INSTALL` document; but instead of `/usr/local/sbin/leafnode`, you'll type `/usr/local/sbin/stunnel -f -p /etc/leafnode/stunnel.pem -l /usr/local/sbin/leafnode.`
Q:	How do I use fetchnews with NNTP/SSL servers, such as `nntp.sourceforge.net`?
A:	Warning: SourceForge does not currently support the HEAD, STAT and BODY commands, so leafnode-1 is totally out of the play for now. leafnode-2 will work for lurking, but will likely be unable to post. Sourceforge are aware that we need these commands and will add them at a later time. Obtain stunnel version 3 and install it. Arrange for stunnel to be started at system boot time, try: `/usr/sbin/stunnel -c -d 127.0.0.1:563 -r nntp.sourceforge.net:563` Add server = localhost port = 563 username = YOUR_SF_LOGIN password = TOP_SECRET to your `/etc/leafnode/config`.

Q:	I cannot post, leafnode tells me the Message-ID is invalid.
A:	Netscape Communicator, Mozilla and derived products (Beonex) will by default generate the Message-ID from the domain part of your E-Mail address. However, if your address is that of a big freemailer site (hotmail.com, yahoo.com, gmx.de), this will lead to invalid Message-IDs. To work around this, go to the Mail & Newsgroups settings and enclose your E-Mail addresses into double quote marks, like this:`"matthias.andree@gmx.de"`This will prevent your Netscape-based newsreader from generating the invalid Message-ID and leave the generation to leafnode.
Q:	I cannot connect to my newsserver.
A:	You may not have configured inetd or xinetd properly, or the corresponding super server is not running. Please review the installation instructions. See below for information specific to Red Hat. To test the setup, try: `telnet localhost 119`. Leafnode should then reply with (on one line): 200 Leafnode NNTP Daemon, version 1.9.27.rel running at merlin.emma.line.org (my fqdn: merlin.emma.line.org)
Q:	Remote users cannot connect to leafnode.
A:	You are connecting from outside the same networks that your leafnode server is in. Leafnode by default refuses connections from outside your LAN to prevent your leafnode server from abuse should you forget to configure tcpd or make a mistake when writing your `hosts.allow` or `hosts.deny` files. Please see `/etc/leafnode/config.example` for the `allowstrangers` option and how to configure this option, and its requirements. YOU are responsible for the abuse of your server if this option is enabled, so only give access to people with static IP whom you trust. If the clients are on dynamic IP, please use other methods of access instead, for instance SSH tunnels (which are also available on Windows, before you ask).

1.	Texpire does not expire articles.
	The backup software that you are using may not reset the atime after reading a file. Check if you can reconfigure it to reset the “atime”. As a workaround, run `texpire -f`. This will expire articles somewhat earlier because expiry is then determined from the time the file was last modified, rather than when it was last accessed.
2.	Texpire message.id counts do not match the sum of the group counts!
	This may happen if texpire has been interrupted previously, crashed, some other application touched the spool or the spool is corrupt.

Q:	leafnode loses subscriptions of low-traffic groups with Gnus.
A:	Check the setting of gnus-read-active-file (you can use customize-variable to do that), it should be `'some` or `nil`.
Q:	When searching news with Netscape, I only get back “unknown command”.
A:	To search news, older versions of Netscape needed a news server which supports the XPAT command. Leafnode-1 does not. If you want to use Netscape, you have to upgrade to version 4.5 and press the “options” button which appears in the “search messages” window. In the box which appears you have to select “on your local system”.
Q:	Outlook Express locks up.
A:	This can be caused by a corrupted `inbox` file in Outlook Express. It is said to happen during the initial install of Internet Explorer. To fix this problem, go to “Add/Remove Programs”, choose “Internet Explorer”, then “Repair installation.” Thanks to Jim Gifford who talked to Microsoft to find this solution.
Q:	Tin complains about a missing file `/var/lib/news/active`.
A:	Either you have started the wrong version of tin (the one which tries to read news directly from the spool) or your groupinfo file is corrupt. In the first case, simply invoke tin with the -r flag: `tin -r`. If this does not help, try to rebuild the groupinfo file by running `fetchnews -f`.