[plug] PLUG News Server

[Tim White]

On 18/12/11 20:57, Bernd Felsche wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 14:08:55 Tim White wrote:
>> It has been awhile since PLUG has had a News server (NNTP). However,
>> today I have started some testing with inn2 on bath gateing to mailman
>> on pot. (So far, just for the offtopic list). I've also made it
>> authenticate against LDAP as this was easier than trying to make it
>> authenticate against mailman.
> INN2 differs from INN is what way?
As far as I know, it's just a newer version.
>
> I provided the original NNTP server powered by leafnode-2 which had
> the ability to authenticate users. The latest alpha (leafnode-2 has
> been in alpha for almost a decade) appears to provide for PAM
> authentication (which can use LDAP as well as many other methods).
>
> <http://www.dt.e-technik.uni-dortmund.de/~ma/leafnode/beta/>
My only issue was that (last time I checked) the leafnode2 wasn't in the 
repository, so for the purpose of security updates it makes it difficult 
if we have to monitor it, and build our own packages we risk security 
problems.
>
> A mailman gateway was crafted by somebody else in PLUG (Nick?).
I understand that this was the situation. However, I don't understand 
why as mailman has a gateway built in! All I did in mailman was setup 
the news server, and on the news server set the ip address (pot) to be 
authenticated by ip and have posting perms.
>
> The major problem with leafnode is the "no administration" paradigm.
> Under normal circumstances, you don't have to ever touch it; unless
> you want to set up a(nother) "local" newsgroup. You may not see that
> as a problem but if it doesn't need anybody fiddling with it on a
> regular basis, it gets forgotten.

True. As long as what ever we use can use pam, then we can use ldap. 
Inn2 uses pam, so ldap was simple to setup. We could allow 
un-authenticated users read access only, currently though without auth 
you have no access.


Tim