*BSD News Article 68375


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From: pschwenk@gypsy.wcupa.edu (Peter Schwenk)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Have you set up a News server?
Date: 12 May 1996 22:56:01 GMT
Organization: West Chester University of Pennsylvania
Lines: 59
Message-ID: <4n5qa1$6ko@crooow.wcupa.edu>
References: <4n11cv$k088_002@ca.mdis.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: gypsy.wcupa.edu
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]


Preston L. Bannister (pbannister@ca.mdis.com) wrote:
: I'm trying to set up a News server.  

: We have perhaps a half-dozen people that might read News regularly, and about 
: 30 people who would have access to News.

: Our internet access is via a T1 line into CERFnet, so presumably bandwidth is 
: not a problem.

: What is reasonable hardware for this role?

: We have a 486/66 box with 16 MB RAM, and 1.3 GB of (IDE) disk space allocated 
: for the News server.

: My (inexpert) opinion was that C News and NNTP would be a good fit, with INN 
: needing more memory to run well, and offering more than we need in terms of 
: performance.

: Can someone with experience setting up a News server comment on this?  

: Is the disk space sufficient (for carrying perhaps just the comp.* groups)?

: Is C News/NNTP a good choice, or can INN run in "only" 16 meg?


: I'm looking for value judgements, not explanations I can look up... :-)

: --
: Preston L. Bannister
: pbannister@ca.mdis.com
: (714)724-5724



Hello Preston,

From my admittedly limited experience, I would say that that machine you
described would be sufficient for the load you would put on it.  I wouldn't
ask the machine to do much else.  The disk drive you mentioned is probably
just big enough for just the comp.* tree.

I'm using FreeBSD 2.1 and INN1.4unoff4 for our news server, but I am running
into some trouble.  The part of INN that expires old articles isn't working
correctly, and I haven't been able to figure out what is going wrong.  I
would imagine that someone is using FreeBSD 2.1 and INN1.4 successfully, but
I haven't gotten any feedback from them yet.  You may want to stick with 
CNEWS with the small demand that you will have on the system.

If anyone reads this who is successfully using INN1.4 with FreeBSD 2.1,
could you please email or post some wisdom about getting them to work
together?



--
- Peter Schwenk, Academic Computing, West Chester University of Pennsylvania
- pschwenk@wcupa.edu
- "I am not an official spokesperson for West Chester University." - P.S.