Debian bug report logs - #909
tin configuration problems

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Date: Thu, 25 May 95 01:40 BST
From: iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson)
To: Debian bugs submission address <debian-bugs@pixar.com>
Subject: tin configuration problems

Package: tin
Version: 1.22-1

Firstly, the package control file contains:
 Version: 1.22 1.22
 Package_Revision: 1 1
Each of the values appears twice, which is clearly a mistake.

Tin recommends `cnews | inn'.  This is almost certainly a mistake -
it's perfectly reasonable to run a newsreader on a news client system
without a local news server.  If tin needs to use a local `inews'
program to post (rather than using NNTP directly) it should have a
dependency on `inewsinn | inn'.

When I installed the package I got:

 Setting up tin ...

 /usr/bin ~/in
 ~/in
 Note: This appears to be a new installation, one or both of the files
 /etc/nntpserver and /etc/inews.gateway was created.  Please check
 these files to insure that they have the correct values.
 /etc/nntpserver needs to contain the correct name of your NNTP
 server.  /etc/inews.gateway needs to contain the domain name under
 which you receive mail.

 Hit return to acknowledge this message and continue system configuration:

There are a number of problems with this.

The output `/usr/bin ~/in' is very odd.  It may be the output of a
`pushd' command in the postinst script, I suppose.

The information in the /etc/nntpserver file is already available in
/etc/news/server (this installed by the INN or inewsinn packages).
Tin should be reconfigured to look in /etc/news/server instead, or if
this is impossible, /etc/nntpserver should be a symlink link to
/etc/news/server.

Currently the tin postinst uses `uname -a' to determine your system
name and then hopes that that is your NNTP server - this is clearly
bad, as many systems will be using a site (company or campus) news
server, rather than a local one.  In any case, `uname -a' is not the
way to determine the system's FQDN even if that were the right thing
to use - `hostname --fqdn' is.

The /etc/inews.gateway file is not documented anywhere.  I looked in
tin(1), in /usr/doc/news - where tin doesn't install anything - and
used `man inews.gateway'.  In desperation I looked in
/var/lib/dpkg/info/tin.list, and found that tin doesn't install any
other documentation.

I can't figure out what to put in it; the postinst seems to have used
my machine name again.  It may be just another version of
/etc/news/server, to be used for posting instead of reading.  If so
the package should be fixed to use /etc/news/server instead.

When all of these things are done correctly the tin postinst will no
longer need to query, warn or prompt the user.

I also suspect that tin is using the wrong `From:' line on postings;
however the `From:' line on local postings on my system is _supposed_
to be the machine's leaf nodename, so I don't see anything wrong.

It should use /etc/mailname - see mailers.txt.  (NB: mailers.txt has a
mistake regarding the contents of /etc/mailname.  It says at one point
that /etc/mailname contains the part of the From: line of
locally-generated mail and news after the local hostname; it should
say that it contains the part after the `@' sign, as is stated
elsewhere in the file.)

Ian.