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NEWSCTL(5)               DragonFly File Formats Manual              NEWSCTL(5)


NAME

       newsctl - USENET network news control files


DESCRIPTION

       News control files live in /var/lib/news.  The major control files are
       the sys file (controlling distribution of news, see newssys(5)) and the
       active file (controlling local filing, see newsdb(5)).  A number of
       minor files are also present.

       Mailname contains the Internet domain name of this news system.  If
       your news system doesn't have an Internet domain name (e.g.
       dept.university.edu or fredshouse.sf.ca.us), you might consider
       obtaining one.  Failing that, if your news system is registered in the
       UUCP maps, you can use name.uucp where name is your system's UUCP name.
       If your site is not registered in the UUCP maps but you have UUCP
       connections to other sites, please get registered!  It is, strictly
       speaking, not acceptable to give DUMBHOST.BITNET as a mailname; Bitnet
       sites should obtain and use Internet domain names or be hidden behind
       gateways.  As a kludge to accommodate unregistered sites who are one
       hop off registered ones, mailname's contents may be of the form
       ``a@b'', indicating that mail addresses of the form ``user%a@b'' are
       correct.

       Mailpaths describes how to reach the moderators of various hierarchies
       of news groups by mail (to submit postings to moderated groups).  Each
       line consists of two fields: a news group pattern (see newssys(5)) and
       mail address, preferably in UUCP bang notation (site1!site2!user) to
       avoid ambiguity.  The first line whose group pattern matches the
       newsgroup is used.  An entry for `all' near the end is a good idea, to
       forward postings for any otherwise-unrecognised groups to some known
       `smart host' (be sure to get the smart-host's permission first).  If
       the user name of the mail address is `%s', as is usual, the %s is
       replaced with the name of the moderated group, except that all dots are
       replaced with dashes (e.g. posting to comp.compilers with a mailpaths
       entry of all smarthost would generate a mail address of
       smarthost!comp-compilers).  An unrelated feature of mailpaths is that
       an entry for the group internet will be used to route mail replies
       (manual and automatic) for sites whose mailers cannot deal directly
       with From: addresses.

       Organization (or organisation) contains the default value for the
       Organization: header for postings originating locally.  Only the first
       line is significant.

       Postdefltdist and postdefltgroup contain the default distribution and
       group, respectively, for local postings.

       Server contains the hostname (see hostname(1)) of the server in your
       cluster (normally, the host that runs relaynews).  If such a file
       exists, certain aspects of processing will be redirected from clients
       to the server using rsh(1).

       Whoami contains the name of this news system, for news purposes.  This
       is the site name used in Path: headers and so must agree with the name
       your news neighbours use in their sys files.


EXAMPLES

       A mailname.

            world.std.com

       A mailpaths for a UUNET customer.

            all  uunet!%s
            internet  uunet!%s

       A whoami.

            world

       A server.

            world


FILES

       /var/lib/news/mailname
       /var/lib/news/mailpaths
       /var/lib/news/organi[sz]ation
       /var/lib/news/postdefltdist
       /var/lib/news/postdefltgroup
       /var/lib/news/server
       /var/lib/news/whoami


SEE ALSO

       inews(1CN), postnews(1CN), newssys(5)


HISTORY

       Written by Geoff Collyer for the C News project.

                                 15 Sept 1994                       NEWSCTL(5)

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