Miscellaneous Files

There are a number of files that control C-News' behavior, but are not essential to its functioning. All of them reside in /usr/lib/news. We will describe them briefly.

newsgroups

This is a companion file of active which contains a list of newsgroup names, along with a one-line description of its main topic. This file is automatically updated when C News receives a check-news control message (see section 18.8).

localgroups

If you have a number of local groups that you don't want C News to complain about every time you receive a checknews mes- sage, put their names and descriptions in this file, just like they would appear in newsgroups.

mailpaths

This file contains the moderator's address for each moderated group. Each line contains the group name, followed by the mod- erator's email address (offset by a tab).

Two special entries are provided as default. These are backbone and internet. Both provide --- in bang-path notation --- the path to the nearest backbone site, and the site that understands RFC 822-style addresses (user@host). The default entries are

                     internet      backbone

You will not have to change the internet entry if you have smail or sendmail installed, because they understand RFC 822-addressing.

The backbone entry is used whenever a user posts to a moderated group whose moderator is not listed explicitly. If the newsgroup's name is alt.sewer, and the backbone entry con- tains path!%s, C News will mail the article to path!alt-sewer, hoping that the backbone machine is able to forward the arti- cle. To find out which path to use, ask the news admins at the site that feeds you. As a last resort, you can also use uunet.uu.net!%s.

distributions

This file is not really a C News file, but it is used by some newsreaders, and nntpd. It contains the list of distribu- tions recognized by your site, and a description of its (intended) effect. For example, Virtual Brewery has the following file:

world

everywhere in the world

local

Only local to this site

nl

Netherlands only

mugnet

MUGNET only

fr

France only

de

Germany only

brewery

Virtual Brewery only

log

This file contains a log of all C News activities. It is culled regularly by running newsdaily; copies of the old log- files are kept in log.o, log.oo, etc.

errlog

This is a log of all error messages created by C News. These do not include articles junked due to wrong group, etc. This file is mailed to the newsmaster (usenet by default) automati- cally by newsdaily if it is found to be non-empty.

errlog

is cleared by newsdaily. Old copies are kept in errlog.o and companions.

batchlog

This logs all runs of sendbatches. It is usually of scant interest only. It is also attended by newsdaily.

watchtime

This is an empty file created each time newswatch is run.