What the inn and suck are?

Inn stands for "InterNetNews daemon", it handles multi-user access to local news resources.

Suck is news sucker; it mediates in news exchange between two news servers: our and remote (it emulates news reader behavior; there is a different news exchange
protocol between two news servers (built in innd) but it requires a special configuration on both sides and we don't want this).

When to install inn+suck.

If you think that the following conditions are applying to you:

   1.You're bored and you need some changes (necessary condition, because if you need local news server, leafnode will be enough and simplest to configure,
     besides this experiment could be very expensive in time and nerves),
   2.Your news resources use more than one user (for one user only "rtin -SQ" is enough) or your computer is local network server (say, in your company),
   3.Leafnode possibility are not enough (you need killfiles and other limits on received news mail),
   4.News receiving process is too long and you need some compression,

that means you should install inn+suck duet.

If you want to install this software, following packages (or newer versions) are required:

   1.cleanfeed (ex. cleanfeed-0.95.5a-1),
   2.inn (ex. inn-1.7.2-13, WARNING: the original packet from RedHat5.1 distribution is corrupted),
   3.perl-MD5 (ex. perl-MD5-1.7-2),
   4.suck (ex. suck-3.9.4-2).

I used the following addresses:

     cleanfeed, inn and perl-MD5 packets - ftp.task.gda.pl/pub/linux/redhat-updated/i386/RedHat/RPMS/
     suck packet ftp.task.gda.pl/pub/linux/redhat-contrib/tbird/i386/

Advantages and disadvantages of this solution.

inn+suck advantages:

   1.Devilish fast,
   2.Very big possibilities (killfile, etc.), but you must look at suck possibilities (because after receiving, mail is send to inn and IMHO if something were received,
     let it stay),
   3.You can configure inn+suck, in the way that news are transported compressed, so receiving time is much shorter,
   4.You can use grep in spool directory without any "incidental results" (this suggestion refers to the simplest leafnode, where expire time is calculated since last
     access time, so if you "did it" this time gets longer),
   5.When you install this news server you are "one of the best" (majority of big news servers use inn).

inn+suck disadvantages:

   1.Difficult configuration and hermetic documentation (at least at the beginning) but this document was made to eliminate this disadvantage,
   2.Memory hunger:
          innd process is in memory all the time (leafnode is running on demand),
          On the disk inn needs much more space (but it is acceptable).

Installation and configuration.

Installation and configuration process is simple (at least before running it for the first time, but about that, without this preface, average news eater can realize after
few days of fights):

   1.Install inn and suck (and few more details described before),
   2.Remove peers section in file "/etc/news/innfeed.conf",
   3.Add your own feed in file "/etc/news/newsfeeds", i.e.:
 

          ...
          news.task.gda.pl\
                  :!junk,!test,!to\
                  :Tf,Wnm:
          ...

     where news.task.gda.pl is a name of your news server, and to acceptable distribution list add your own (ex. "de", ... I use polish -- "pl"):

          ...
          ME\