Installing News Software

During the installation of Red Hat Linux from this book's companion CD-ROMs, you have the option to install the necessary packages for news. As described in Chapter 2, select the News Server package group when you are prompted for which package groups to install.

Cross Ref

If you install the mail and news software during Linux installation, you do not have to do much more to begin using the mail and news services. Otherwise, you can use the Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) to install individual packages. Chapter 21 describes how to use the rpm program to install new software.

To access the RPM files for news, mount the appropriate CD-ROM by using the following command:

mount /mnt/cdrom

Then change the directory to /mnt/cdrom/RedHat/RPMS. You will find the RPM files in that directory. Following are some of the RPMs you may want to install (I show the RPM name; the actual filename starts with the RPM name, has a version number, and ends with an .rpm extension):

cleanfeed (a spam filter for news servers)
inews (an Internet news program to post news)
inn (InterNetNews, a TCP/IP-based news server)
slrn (a simple, NNTP-based newsreader)

You have probably already installed most of these packages. For this chapter, you need only inn and a news reader such as Mozilla (as well as any other mail or news reader you want to try).