NOFFLE for Debian
-----------------

This is the first debian package of noffle, so be prepared for some rough
edges. By all means, _please_ report any bugs you find! (and do so through
the debian bug tracking system, http://bugs.debian.org/)

The standard configuration is stored in /etc/news/noffle.conf, see the
manpage for noffle.conf(5) for more info.

IMPORTANT: Once it's been configured, you need to run the following steps
before it will work properly:

    noffle --query groups
    noffle --query desc         (see note)
    noffle --fetch

The first fetches the list of available newsgroups from the server. The
second fetches the descriptions of the newsgroups. This isn't required,
but sometimes it can be useful to have those descriptions. The third
actually fetches the articles the first time. After the first time, how
articles can be fetched is decided by the "mode" (see next paragraph).

Noffle on Debian can run in basically two "modes": via PPP and via cron.
The difference is that in PPP mode, it goes online and fetches any
requested articles when the PPP connection is made, whereas in cron mode
it is always online and fetches articles every 30 minutes (edit
/etc/cron.d/noffle to adjust). The mode is configured via
/etc/default/noffle. Of course, the PPP mode can be misused to control
the fetching by hand (i.e. by running "noffle --fetch").

Every day (via cron.daily) an expire is done.

 -- Paul Slootman <paul@debian.org>, Mon, 24 Sep 2001 19:55:36 +0200
 -- Martin A. Godisch <godisch@tcs.inf.tu-dresden.de>  Sat, 04 Jan 2003 09:30:20 +0100


Regarding security when authenticating to your NNTP server please keep
two aspects in mind:

1. Your username and password will be stored in plaintext two times on your
   harddisk, readable by everyone at least in the group 'news'.
2. Your username and password will be transmitted in plaintext over the wire.

If you have an SSH account on a host which is authenticated to your NNTP
server by itself, you may consider to open an SSH tunnel to that host and
to use localhost as NNTP proxy for noffle. This tunnel can be created using
some kind of

  ssh -fNL 10119:remote.news.server:119 mylogin@remote.ssh.server

in combination with SSH public key authentication, which yields

  localhost:10119

as "remote" NNTP server for noffle. Have a look at the SSH manuals for
further information.

 -- Martin A. Godisch <godisch@tcs.inf.tu-dresden.de>  Sat, 04 Jan 2003 09:30:20 +0100


There are three low-traffic mailing lists concerning noffle, visit

  http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/noffle-announce
  http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/noffle-devel
  http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/noffle-users

if you are interested.

 -- Martin A. Godisch <godisch@tcs.inf.tu-dresden.de>  Mon, 20 Jan 2003 16:20:58 +0100