$Revision: 1.39 $

Welcome to inn 1.5.1

	This is the public release of version 1.5.1 of InterNet News. This
	work is sponsored by the Internet Software Consortium.

	This release, while having various bug fixes and a few minor
	enhancements, is mostly here to fix a security hole in
	parsecontrol. It is recommended that if you are running 1.5 you
	upgrade immediately. If you're running 1.4 you have the same bug
	present, and should probably upgrade as well.

Some history:
	1.4sec was the last release produced by Rich Salz, the original
	author of INN. 1.4sec came out in the middle of 1993. After that
	Rich was unable to dedicate the time necessary to maintain it (and
	I now fully understand why). Dave Barr unofficially took over and
	produced 4 releases with a lot of help from the user
	community. Dave's 4 releases contained a lot of bug fixes and some
	functionality additions.

	Rich Salz, at the beginning of 1996, handed the source pool
	over to me as part of the agreement that the ISC would take over
	maintenance and development of future INN releases. Starting with
	Rich's post 1.4 source pool, I merged in the changes that had
	occured through the 4 'unoff' versions, and then added quite a few
	bug fixes, enhancements etc. 3 alpha and 2 beta versions later you
	have the result of all that work.

Who's responsible:
	Even though most of the code has been written by other people, I'm
	the one to blame for all this. I went cross-eyed double checking
	every change that went into this release, so all errors are mine.

Who to thank:
	Rich Salz deserves a big thank-you for writing INN in the first
	place and then being kind enough to bless me and the ISC as the
	keepers of the flame. Paul Vixie at the ISC provided the financing
	necessary to keep me in espresso coffee through too many sleepless
	nights (and the boot up the backside to make the nights
        sleepless). Dave Barr did a fine job holding the fort while INN was in
	limbo, and getting INN into its current form without the unoff
	releases to work with would have been a much longer job.

	Many, many other people have help in various ways. As I said above,
	most of the code has been written by other people and my job has
	been to stitch it all together. The CONTRIBUTORS file lists who
	helped.

Bug reports etc.
	I'm gathering information on who uses INN. If you haven't do so for
	a previous version of INN, then please do the following:

		uname -a | Mail -s "1.5.1 usage survey" inn-survey@isc.org

	I will appreciate it. You won't get a reply.

	I'm interested in all bug reports. Not just on the programs, but on
	the documentation too. Please send *all* such reports to:

		inn-bugs@isc.org

	even if you post to usenet, please CC the above address. All other
	INN mail should go to:

		inn@isc.org
	
	For general "how do I do this" questions you should post to
	news.software.nntp as there a lot of experienced INN users there,
	and I don't have the time necessary to help except when something
	is obviously broken.

	Have fun and while no postcard is necessary (I move too frequently
	these days).

To support the effort:
        Note that INN is supported by the Internet Software Consortium,
        and although it is free for use and redistribution and incorporation
        into vendor products and export and anything else you can think of,
        it costs money to produce.  That money comes from ISP's, hardware and
        software vendors, companies who make extensive use of the software,
        and generally kind hearted folk such as yourself.  

        The Internet Software Consortium has also commissioned a DHCP
        server implementation, handles the official support/release of
        BIND, and supports the Kerberos Version 5 effort at MIT.  You can
        learn more about the ISC's goals and accomplishments from the web
        page at <URL:http://www.isc.org/isc/>.


James Brister
inn@isc.org		(INN related mail)
brister@vix.com		(non-INN mail)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
A couple notes:

+ A normal 'make update' doesn't install various config files on top of your
  existing ones (for good reason). However I highly recommend you use the
  new control.ctl file. It has a lot more entries in it and most defaults
  are changed to log, rather than mail, and also to use pgp to verify
  certain control messages. Installing this file will reduce the amount of
  damage and or mailbombing that occurs with forged control messages. More
  details below.

+ If your system doesn't have a sample config.data file in the sample-configs
  directory (or if the one in that directory for your system is wrong) then
  please send me yours and I'll include it in there.

			 -------------------------

Changes since 1.5:

	- security hole in parsecontrol fixed.
	- the main 'all' build rule now causes the 'subst' processing to
	  only report files that got changed. Files that didn't get changed
	  are not mentioned.
	- innxmit now has an '-l' flag to turn off the logging of the
	  reason the remote rejected an article.
	- nntpget is fixed when it offers an article to the local server,
	  but the server doesn't want it.
	- bug fix in ihave control message generation.
	- bug fix in takethis command handling (when no message id given).
	- bug fix to scanlogs for certain broken sort(1) program (HP) that
	  put a newline on the end of empty input.
	- innwatch is now started by default in rc.news
	- The full Path header is now passed to perl scripts, rather than
	  just the first entry.
	- bug fixed in expireover when processing folded headers.
	- Mailing of bad control messages is configurable (in config.data)
	- TCL include file path now configurable.
	- The sample config files are more complete.
	- Bug fix in clibrary.h that was causing dbz.c to always use MMAP.
	- Bug fixed in logging of successful posting to moderated group.
	- Bug fix in perl hooks that was corrupting return value from subrs/

			 -------------------------

Changes since 1.5b2:

	- The memory leaks in the perl hooks are plugged. These hooks look
	  to be a very valuable way of trimming make-money-fast posts and
	  excessive multi-postings.

	- If news.daily is called with the 'delayrm' argument, then the
	  temporary file expire writes to is uniquely named (the pid is
	  added to the end). If something kills expirerm before it's
	  finished unlinking expired article, then the next news.daily wont
	  delete the temp file (so you can use it to remove the
	  articles). If expirem finishes properly, then the temp file is
	  moved to its normal spot (MOST_LOGS/expire.list).

	- If a control message is malformed (such as a broken control
	  header), then the bad control message is no longer mailed to the
	  new admin and is simply logged to $MOST_LOGS/badcontrol.log. Admins
	  who lived through the recent swarm of badly forged rmgroup messages
	  will appreciate this I think.

	- Using PGP for control message verification is now the default. It
	  is turned on in for all heirarchies I know of that are managed by
	  someone signing their control messages. I don't have the pgp keys
	  for all these people though. I only have the keys for
	  tale@uunet.uu.net (who does the big-8) and for control@usenet.fr
	  (who manages fr.*).  To turn this off (and I really recommend you
	  don't do that unless you have to) you need to change control.ctl
	  and config.data.

	- If pgp doesn't exist on your system, and you forget fix config.data
	  and/or control.ctl, then all failed verifications due to missing
	  pgp binary, get logged to MOST_LOGS/failedpgp.log.

	- If pgp ran, but fails to verify a control message (e.g. due to a
	  missing signature), then the control message is logged to
	  MOST_LOGS/badpgp.log.

	- nnrpd will kill itself (via an alarm) if it gets hung in sending
	  data to a client. The timeout for this is DEFAULT_TIMEOUT in
	  config.data.

	- Bug fixed in makehistory when creating a history file with the
	  '-s' and '-i' flags. Shoulds result in better dbz performance for
	  such history files.

	- rnews exits with a non-zero exit code if the article it's
	  processing has malformed headers.

			 -------------------------

Rev 1.5b2 is mostly just bug fixes over 1.5b1.

	- a fairly major performance fix (hammering of disk the active file
	  was on).

	- slowed down some unnecessary buffer expansion.

	- bug fix when accepting articles just slightly over max-size limit.

	- The manpages for sections 1 and 8 have been cleaned up to show
	  options more clearly.

	- Various new man pages (some being split up versions of other pages).

	- A new directory authprogs that has a sample authorization program
	  for use with the nnrpd 'authinfo generic'. This is not integrated
	  in any way (not even a makefile) and is more for the curious
	  right now than for serious use. See the readme file in there.

	- A new installation step will fixup the #! line of any perl
	  scripts to match the value you defined in config.data.

	- grephistory has a new '-t' flag.

	- more sample code (commented out) in the perl filters.

	- innlog.pl understands more stuff in the log file.

	- added an innshellvars.csh for those who login as news (or anyone
	  crazy enough to program in the c-shell).

Some random notes:

	This isn't new, but I need to remind some people: don't use 1.4
	binaries with 1.5. The message protocol to/from innd defined in
	lib/inndcomm.c changed for 1.5 and so old programs, or anything
	you've written and linked to an old libinn.a, is doomed to
	fail. This is most evident with ctlinnd.

	dbz.c is distributed in pre-patched form. It's still an old dbz,
	though. 

	The LIKE_PULLERS config variable (if set to DONT--the default) can
	adversely affect certain types of news readers (gnus seems to be
	one). If a human starts complaining about slow reader response,
	they're probably using one of these clients. A more intelligent
	solution than the LIKE_PULLERS will be investigated
	(suggestions welcome). If complaints get bad, set it to DO and
	recompile.


There are still some known problems:

	- The perl hooks leak memory.

	- If the target of a funnel feed gets dropped and the funnel feed
	  itself doesn't get dropped, then the next time a article arrives
	  that should get fed to the funnel entry, innd will core dump.

	  e.g. in newsfeeds

		foo:*:Tm:bar
		bar:!*:Tf,Wnm*:

	  if you 'ctlinnd drop bar', then things go bad very very quickly.

	- The 'offered' count reported by innxmit is wrong if innxmit stops
	  issuing CHECKs and only issue TAKETHIS commands.

			 -------------------------

Differences from the 1.5a3 alpha release.

	+ A contrib directory has been included to add useful things that
	  for one reason or another (usually lack of time on my part) can't
	  be a full part of inn (yet, at least).

	+ Some bug fixes.

	+ new 'notdaily' argument for news.daily. Use this on extra times
	  during the day that you run news.daily. (dneedham).

Things actually in earlier releases but not properly noted in this README
back then:

	+ innd will catch the SIGUSR1 signal and recreate the control
	  channel (for when something deletes the named socket) (dneedham).

	+ 'cmsg' in Subject lines is ignored. The Control header is all tha
	  matters.

	+ inews now asks the server it's talking to for the moderator
	  address info, so copying a moderators file around the network is
	  no longer necessary (dneedham).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the third and last alpha of inn 1.5.

This release includes the following new features.

	- Perl support based on work done by Christophe Wolfhugel. It's had
	  some testing done, but no extensive experience with things like
	  memory footprint etc. See README.perl_hook for more details.
	- Poison newsgroup flag ``@'' in newsfeeds by John Stapleton. See
	  the newsfeeds(5) man page.
	- John Stapleton's support for misbehaving readers: (a) short timeout
	  on first read (to catch readers who connect and then go away
	  immediately) and (b) restrict the number of times a remote system
	  can connect per N seconds. (See the `-X' `-H' and `-T' flags in
	  the innd.8 man page.)
	- Support for '-e' in expire (expire on earliest crosspost) by John
	  Levine.
	- Perl and tcl versions of innshellvars.
	- If LOG_SIZE is set to DO in config.data, then the size of each
	  article will be put in the log entry.
	- If LIKE_PULLERS is set to DONT, then a small sleep is done on 
	  ARTICLE commands, and on HEAD and BODY after the first 100
	  commands done. This won't hinder normal readers, but will slow
	  down ``sucking'' feeds.
	- Updates to nntpsend an shrinkfile from chongo.
	- Default pathnames in config.data are a little more consistent. 
	- Some bug fixes.	

From here on out, all new features will have to wait for 1.6. This version
will turn into a publically advertised beta test fairly soon. Please hammer
on it and send in all bug reports to <inn@isc.org>.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The first alpha was a merge of several things: Rich's original 1.5 alpha
code; the 1.4unoff4 release put out by Dave Barr; Bob Halley's TCL
filtering extension.

The second alpha included:

	- PGP verification of control messages (from tale).
	- actsync program (from chongo)
	- Patches for spooling in nnrpd if innd is unavailable (from dneedham)
	- XBATCH (compressed rnews-ready batches) support (via Matthias U.)
	- The '-x' option from innd is removed and adding
	  Xref headers the standard behaviour. (from dneedham)
	- The message format used by libcomm now includes a protocol 
	  version and a byte-count header (so ctlinnd from previous 
	  version won't work with this version).
	- A new 'p' flag for the newsfeeds entries: the time the article
	  was posted (from Matthias U.)
	- A LIST SUBSCRIPTIONS command for nnrpd (from dneedham).
	- gzip compress recognition to rnews (from Matthias U.)
	- A method of limiting those peers (in hosts.nntp) that can use
	  streaming (based on Christophe W.'s idea).

	Heaps of other more minor patches from various people (see the
	CHANGES) file.

Please send *all* mail regarding inn to me at the following address:

	inn@isc.org

Even if it is going to some mailing list that I'm already on, CC to
inn@isc.org anyway.

I'm especially interested in documentation gaps. Not that I like writing
documentation.

Thanks

James

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
InterNetNews -- the Internet meets Netnews
------------------------------------------
"Remember to tell your kids about the days when USENET was store and
 forward."  -- Jim Thompson, as part of a message that said he was getting
 under 200ms propagation, disk to disk.

InterNetNews is a complete Usenet system.  The cornerstone of the package
is innd, an NNTP server that multiplexes all I/O.  Think of it as an nntpd
merged with the B News inews, or as a C News relaynews that reads multiple
NNTP streams.  Newsreading is handled by a separate server, nnrpd, that is
spawned for each client.  Both innd and nnrpd have some slight variances
from the NNTP protocol; see the manpages.

The distribution is a compressed tar file. A new directory
and unpack the tar file in that directory.  For example:
	; mkdir inn
	; cd inn
	; ftp ftp.uu.net
	ftp> user anonymous <you@your.host.name>
	ftp> type image
	ftp> get news/nntp/inn/inn.tar.Z inn.tar.Z
	ftp> quit
	; uncompress <inn.tar.Z | tar vxf -
	; rm inn.tar.Z

The installation instructions are in Install.ms.  This is an nroff/troff
document that uses the -ms macro package, and is about 30 typeset pages.
(If you have groff use "-mgs".) The distribution has this file split into
two pieces; you can join them by typing either of the following commmands:
	; make Install.ms
	; cat Install.ms.? >Install.ms
You should probably print out a copy of config/config.dist when you print
out the installation manual.

Please read the COPYRIGHT.  This package has NO WARRANTY; use at your
own risk.

When updating from a previous release, you will usually want to do "make
update" from the top-level directory; this will only install the programs.
To update your scripts and config files, cd into the "site" directory and
do "make clean" -- this will remove any files that are unchanged from
the official release.  Then do "make diff >diff"; this will show you what
changes you will have to merge in.  Now merge in your changes (from
where the files are, ie. /usr/lib/news...) into the files in
$INN/site.  (You may find that due to the bug fixes and new features in
this release, you may not need to change any of the scripts, just the
configuration files).  Finally, doing "make install" will install
everything.

If you have a previous release you will probably also want to update the
pathnames, etc., in the new config file from your old config.  Here is one
way to do that:
	% cd config
	% make subst
	% cp config.dist config.data
	% ./subst -f {OLDFILE} config.data
where "{OLDFILE}" names your old config.data file.

Configuration is done using subst.   Subst is in config/subst.sh and
doc/subst.1.  The history file is written using DBZ.  The DBZ sources and
manual page are in the dbz directory.  Unlike subst, DBZ is kept
separately, to make it easier to track the C News release.  The subst
script and DBZ data utilities are currently at the "Performance Release"
patch date.  Thanks to Henry Spencer and Geoff Collyer for permission to
use and redistribute subst, and to Jon Zeef for permission to use DBZ as
modified by Henry.

This version includes new support for TCL filtering of articles (to either
reject or accept them). This work is done by Bob Halley. See the file
README.tcl_hook for more details.

This version includes support for Geoff Collyer's news overview package,
known as nov.  Nov replaces the external databases used by nn, trn, etc.,
with a common text database.  INN support includes programs to build and
maintain the overview database, and an XOVER command added to nnrpd (the
news-reading daemon) that is becoming a common extension to fetch the
overview data from an NNTP connection.  Nnrpd uses the overview database
internally, if it exists, making certain commands (e.g., XHDR) much
faster.  The nov package includes a newsreader library that you will need,
and some utilities that you will not; it is available on world.std.com in
the file src/news/nov.dist.tar.Z.  Prototypes of modified newsreaders are
in the in src/news/READER.dist.tar.Z -- most maintainers will be providing
official support very soon.  To make it explicit:  if you already have a
newsreader that can use the overview database, either via my NNTP xover
command, or by reading directly from NFS, then INN has all you need.

