Overview

Secrets in This Chapter

• Using Simple News Strategies

• Understanding Newsgroups

• Understanding the Newsgroup Hierarchy

• Verifying Your Newsgroup Posting

• Configuring and Starting the INN Server

• Taking Stock of INN Components

The Internet helps you communicate in many ways. With email, you generally exchange messages with people whom you already know. Sometimes, however, you may want or need to participate in group discussions. If you are looking for help in setting up XFree86 on a system with the ATI Radeon 7000 video chipset, for example, you may want to question someone who knows something about this subject. For that sort of communication, you can post a message on the appropriate Internet newsgroup; someone is likely to give you an answer.

Internet newsgroups are like the bulletin boards or forums on other online systems, such as AOL and MSN. Essentially, newsgroups provide a bulletin-board system that spans the globe. You'll find a wide variety of newsgroups-covering subjects ranging from politics to computers. For Linux-related questions, you can read and post articles to newsgroups, such as comp.os.linux.networking and comp.os.linux.setup. You can think of an Internet newsgroup as a gathering place-a virtual meeting place where you can ask questions and discuss various issues.

Red Hat Linux comes with the software you need to read newsgroups and to set up your own system as a news server. This chapter introduces you to newsgroups and describes how to configure and run the InterNetNews (INN) server, a popular news server. You also learn how to set up local newsgroups for your corporate intranet.