Linux Network Administrators Guide

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21.3. The sys File

The sys file, located in /etc/news , controls which hierarchies you receive and forward to other sites. Although there are maintenance tools named addfeed and delfeed , we think it's better to maintain this file by hand.

The sys file contains entries for each site to which you forward news, as well as a description of the groups you will accept. The first line is a ME entry that describes your system. It's a safe bet to use the following:

ME:all/all::

You also have to add a line for each site to which you feed news. Each line looks like this:

site[/exclusions]:grouplist[/distlist][:flags[:cmds]]

Entries may be continued across newlines using a backslash (\ ) at the end of the line to be continued. A hash sign (# ) denotes a comment.

• site
   

This is the name of the site the entry applies to. One usually chooses the site's UUCP name for this. There has to be an entry for your site in the sys file too, or you will not receive any articles yourself.

The special site name ME denotes your site. The ME entry defines all groups you are willing to store locally. Articles that aren't matched by the ME line will go to the junk group.

C News rejects any articles that have already passed through this site to prevent loops. C News does this by ensuring that the local site name does not appear in the Path: of the article. Some sites may be known by a number of valid names. For example, some sites use their fully qualified domain name in this field, or an alias like news. site.domain . To ensure the loop prevention mechanism works, it is important to add all aliases to the exclusion list, separating them by commas.

For the entry applying to site moria , for instance, the site field would contain moria/moria.orcnet.org . If moria were also by an alias of news.orcnet.org , then our site field would contain moria/moria.orcnet.org,news.orcnet.org .



• grouplist
   

This is a comma-separated subscription list of groups and hierarchies for this particular site. A hierarchy may be specified by giving the hierarchy's prefix (such as comp.os for all groups whose names start with this prefix), optionally followed by the keyword all (e.g., comp.os.all  ).

You can exclude a hierarchy or group from forwarding by preceding it with an exclamation mark. If a newsgroup is checked against the list, the longest match applies. For example, if grouplist contains this list:


   

!comp,comp.os.linux,comp.folklore.computers

no groups from the comp hierarchy except comp.folklore.computers and all groups below comp.os.linux will be fed to that site.

If the site requests to be forwarded all news you receive yourself, enter all as grouplist .



• distlist
   

This value is offset from the grouplist by a slash and contains a list of distributions to be forwarded. Again, you may exclude certain distributions by preceding them with an exclamation mark. All distributions are denoted by all . Omitting distlist implies a list of all .

For example, you may use a distribution list of all,!local to prevent news meant only for local use from being sent to remote sites.

There are usually at least two distributions: world , which is often the default distribution used when none is specified by the user, and local . There may be other distributions that apply to a certain region, state, country, etc. Finally, there are two distributions used by C News only; these are sendme and ihave , and are used for the

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