Caveat: Before compiling anything here, go look at README and conf.h in the "common" directory. Fix conf.h up, and then come back here. Back already? Ok. Now following the bouncing numbers: 1. Create the access file with the proper entries. This file goes wherever you said ACCESS_FILE was supposed to be in common/conf.h. It's format is explained in the manual entry for nntpd.8c. A sample access file is in ../support/access_file. If you don't care who (ab)uses your news server, you can have the line "default read post" in your access file, which will allow anyone on the network to read and post news via your server. See the manual page for a better explanation. Parts two and three are necessary if you're running with TCP: 2. Make an entry for "nntp" in /etc/services. Should be port number 119, tcp. I.e., should look something like: nntp 119/tcp readnews # Network News Transfer Protocol Sun users running yp should yppush this file to make sure all the clients get it. 3. Check ../common/conf.h to make sure you're set to do what you want to do with inetd (i.e., #define ALONE or #undef ALONE). If you are using inetd, a. Add a line to /etc/inetd.conf, or whatever your configuration file is, to reflect the presence of the news server. On 4.3 BSD machines this should look like: nntp stream tcp nowait root /news/lib/nntpd nntpd while under Ultrix or 4.2 BSD machines: nntp stream tcp nowait /news/lib/nntpd nntpd On a Sun, the file is /etc/servers; the line looks like: nntp tcp /news/lib/in.nntpd Be sure to yppush your /etc/servers file if you run yellow pages. Don't forget to kill -HUP your inetd. If you're NOT using inetd, a. Edit ../common/conf.h to have the line #define ALONE to compile in code for the stand alone server. b. You may as well also define "FASTFORK" in ../common/conf.h. This causes the server not to read in the active file every time it forks, but rather to stat it every READINTVL seconds, and if the file has changed since the last read, to read it in again. This makes the children run faster, since they don't have to read the active file every time the parent forks off a child, but the parent server will eat more cpu, doing stat()s every 10 minutes or so. If your server machine is heavily loaded, you might leave this out. c. Change /etc/rc.local to start the server at boot time. Else, if you're using decnet: 2. && 3. Define the NNTP object with ncp: ncp define object NNTP number 0 file /news/lib/nntpd ncp define object NNTP default user guest type stream ncp set object NNTP all # just once for the running system 4. Compile the server by doing "make". 5. Cd .. and continue with the rest of the stuff; you'll wind up doing a make install later.