Changi NNTP Server 1.2

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What's New?

Beta 5

  • Installation of 1.2 beta 4 over version 1.0 or 1.01 failed, unless you completely removed the previous version first. Beta 5 should now install over 1.0 or 1.01 without problem, but unfortunately will not install over beta 4. If you installed beta 4, you must first remove this version. Use the installation utility in the Changi folder to remove beta 4.

  • Processing control.ctl is buggy in beta 4. After receiving a number of newgroup or rmgroup control messages, the connection will die. This bug has been removed.

  • The manual of beta 4 showed an example control.ctl with commas as newsgroup delimiters, but the code uses pipe symbols in order to be compatible with INN.

    Beta 5 expects commas, because all other Changi configurations use commas too. However, for INN compatibility you may set

    SET CHANGICONTROLCTLDELIMIT=124
    

  • Again one user reported the loss of his active file. After checking the code over and over again we come to the conclusion, that this might have been the result of system problems or failures of other applications accessing that file, but not a Changi problem. Anyway, an additional piece of code has been added. If Changi can't find the active file, it will look for active.bak and rename it to active.


  • Incompatibilities

    There are currently no known incompatibilities between version 1.0 and 1.2. However, at least one of the changes made to enable PGP support may introduce difficulties in some installations.

    Continuation Lines in Article Headers

    By definition, large article header items may be stored in more than one line. Continuation lines must start with a space to be detected as such. In previous versions Changi keeps each article header in a single line, even if they were initially received in multiple lines. The program will now maintain the original layout of header lines. All news processing programs should, but may not be prepared to process continuation lines.

    Subject Header of Control Messages

    Previous versions did also modify the subject of control messages or were able to detect control messages by special subject lines and added the control header automatically. This is not supported anymore and control messages are only detected, if they contain a control headerline.

    Duplicate Headerlines

    Another minor change will hopefully solve previous problems rather than introducing new ones. While Changi 1.0 rejected articles with duplicate headerlines in general, version 1.2 will limit this behaviour to the following header items:
    Approved:
    Control:
    Distribution:
    Followup-To:
    From:
    Message-ID:
    Newsgroups:
    NNTP-Posting-Host:
    Path:
    References:
    Reply-To:
    Sender:
    Subject:
    Supersedes:
    
    All remaining duplicates will be discarded and the article will be accepted.

    Chanx Pidfile

    By default, Chanx will now create a pid-file in the domain subdirectory. You may now concurrently connect different newsservers, if they are defined in different domains.

    Watermark Update on Broken Connections

    Chanx will now be able to patrially update watermark files, if a connection breaks before completion.

    Upgrading from Version 0.9

    If you are switching from version 0.9m+n, you should perform the following steps.
    1. Send remaining posts to your provider using your old version.
    2. Make a copy of your current installation.
    3. Install this version into your existing Changi directory.
    4. Run expire -rvxs to create the new history file format.
    5. If not done already, set the NNTPNEIGHBOR environment variable to the full domain name of your provider's news host.
    6. Move host.last or host.watermark files to new directory before calling Chanx.
    7. Keep the server running when starting Chanx or Rnews.
    8. If you created an access permission file, make sure that the local host is granted xfer permission. This is usually done by changing the read keyword to both.


    New Features

    The new version is much more powerful than any previous one, with lots of new program options, environment variables and new configuration files as well. Fortunately, Changi will work in the expected way without these. It's strictly recommended that you do not use any additional settings unless you need a specific behaviour. Experience has shown that many users became easily confused by defining too many options.

    Configurable Control Message Processing

    A new configuration file, control.ctl, is used to define Changi's behaviour while receiving Usenet control messages. Currently only newgroup and rmgroup commands are supported, cancel commands are processed immediately and all other control messages are ignored.

    Defining Additional Newsgroup Access Permissions

    In addition to nntp_access, Changi will also look for a file named team_access, if any newsgroup access is rejected by definitions given in nntp_access.

    To simplify complex reading or posting permissions, team_access supports alias definitions, for newsgroups as well as for lists of hosts.

    Catching-up With Remote

    A new Chanx mode option -mC will now synchronize the watermark file with the remote newsserver without downloading a single article. This option is especially useful when connecting a remote for the first time.

    Windows NT Service

    The Windows NT version will now install itself as a service and is automatically started during system boot.


    Experimental Features

    The following enhancements hda been introduced with version 1.0, but are still considered experimental. Be careful while trying them.

    Character translation

    Articles transfered to and from connected newsreaders may by modified by mapping certain characters. Only subject lines and article bodies are translated.

    Virtual newsgroup local.grep

    Articles posted to local.grep are not processed in the usual way, but will invoke grep to scan for patterns in existing articles. Matching articles are copied to a subgroup of local.grep.


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    URL: changi/manual/whatsnew.html
    Created: 6 August 1996
    Revised: 29 December 1996
    Author: harald@os2point.ping.de