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Usenet news is a collection of over 2500 local discussion groups covering
a variety of topics.
They are accessible from any of the Office of Information Technology
(OIT) UNIX systems through a variety of news readers
There are four supported newsreaders on OIT systems, in addition to
the possibility of reading news via the Thunderbird mail client.
These newsreaders are:
-
rn - ReadNews: An old program for reading
Usenet news, the original replacement for the archaic 'readnews'
program. Fairly simple to use, online documentation via
'man rn'. Basic & reliable. To run, type:
-
rn
-
trn - Threaded ReadNews: modified version
of 'rn', with threading built in so you can follow
conversation threads even if the subject line changes (rn
cannot follow a thread if the subject changes). The 'trn'
processor is basically a superset of the 'rn'
functionality. (When you call 'rn' you are really calling
'trn' in "rn mode".) To run, type:
-
trn
-
xrn - X-based ReadNews: A program for
reading Usenet news that uses the X- windows interface to
display the information. It can only be used on a X-windows
workstation, (usually in the OIT Computer labs). Online documentation is
accessed via
'man xrn', basically runs like 'rn' and 'trn'. To run,
type:
-
xrn
(or launch from an X-windows menu)
-
tin - Threaded Internet News: The newest
program of the three is; more user-friendly and full-screen
oriented. It uses arrow keys for selecting. Documentation is all
internal to the package itself, but some help can be found
in the document "Getting Started With Your TerpConnect UNIX
Account", that is available at OIT Help Desk. To
run, type:
-
tin
-
Thunderbird - Thunderbird has a built-in news
reader. To enable it, click on "Tools" then "Account Settings"
from the menu bar. Next, click the "Add Account" button on the
lower left-hand side of the window, then select "Newsgroup
Account", and click "Continue"/"Next". Once you have entered the
account settings, the newsgroup account will appear on the
left-hand side of your Thunderbird application, under the All
Folder list.
It is suggested to try one of these. If you, however, have
specific
questions, feel free to contact the
OIT Help Desk.
The TerpConnect system on campus has its own news server.
The newsreaders you run on a
particular system will be customized to point to the
appropriate news server.
If you wish to configure manually your UNIX newsreader to get
its news from a server other than the default system server,
you will need to update your NNTPSERVER environment variable.
To do this, at the UNIX prompt, type:
setenv NNTPSERVER news-server
On TerpConnect, this command can be put into your
"~/.environment" file so it is automatically run each time you
login to the TerpConnect system. Once you have made the change,
your news program will point to the other server automatically the
next time you login.
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