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From: jkh@violet.berkeley.edu (Jordan K. Hubbard)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Newbie Near Death - Needs Help!
Date: 6 Jan 1996 22:38:09 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 63
Message-ID: <4cmtkh$j66@agate.berkeley.edu>
References: <4cmisu$ja8@news-s01.ca.us.ibm.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: violet.berkeley.edu
In article <4cmisu$ja8@news-s01.ca.us.ibm.net>,
don adams <dwadams@surfsouth.com> wrote:
>I've been struggling with FreeBSD for three months now and am about ready to
>throw in the towel.
OK, first off, I think I can say that you're making a common mistake here,
and one so easily avoided. You're assuming that a UNIX (or UNIX-clone)
system is something that's as easily deployed or maintained as a Windows
box. In reality, it's a somewhat more arcane task which requires some
degree of knowledge on a wide number of fronts. I really do recommend a good
book on UNIX system administration, some good ones being listed in:
http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/bibliography.html
Some of the questions I've answered for you below would have been quickly
answered by, say, Evi Nemeth's book.
>CD-ROM. A couple of weeks ago I received the 2.1 version from Walnut Creek.
>I have this installed and working over the Ethernet network via TCP/IP. I
>can FTP/Telnet, etc. OK. The 2.1 CD-ROM doesn't have the INN package, so I
>installed the Cnews package. Now I can't get Cnews up.
You don't need to confine yourself to packages. Read up on the ports
collection (http://www.freebsd.org/ports) and simply compile it from
/usr/ports/news/inn
If you don't have internet connectivity, that's no problem either. Just
point your browser at the copy of the handbook that came with 2.1 using
the following URL:
file:/usr/share/doc/handbook/handbook.html
(this was desciribed in the installation guide that came with your CD, BTW!).
>One problem is that I can't SU to news or bin so that I can run Cnews
>files. I've edited groups, but when I login as root and su bin or su news I
>get the following message:
> su: /nonexistent: No such file or directory
You need to set a real shell for these users! Try /bin/sh instead of
/nonexistent
>newsreader such as FreeAgent under windows or NeoLogic news under OS/2. Do I
>need to install the NNTP package from the Walnut Creek CD-ROM just to read
Yep - NNTP is the only way of giving your OS/2 clients access to the news,
unless they understand NFS or soemthing (and /var/spool/news over NFS would
suck mightily).
I suggest that you browse the /usr/ports/news tree and carefully read ALL
THE DOCS that come with nntp and inn (see /usr/ports/news/{port}/work subdir
for the unpacked port, as is described in the ports collection docs).
Truly, you will save yourself many more months of confusion just thorugh
some simple reading.
Also: Avoid CNews. Inn is much more advanced.
>and group, but when I try to execute the file I invariably get "Command not
>found" error messages. Any ideas here?
You don't have `.' in your path. Again, see the the Nemeth book.. :-)
Jordan