Diff for "slrn"


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Revision 19 as of 2009-07-02 00:22:13
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Comment: Set the FQDN information in place...
Revision 20 as of 2009-07-03 00:14:36
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Editor: C-59-101-32-53
Comment: Added editor, NNTP / .bashrc, installation sections...
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slrn does not come with an editor so either the system's ''default'' editor will be used or an editor must be specified from the slrn configuration file. For the purposes of this page the venerable editor vim will be used:

{{{
sudo apt-get install vim
}}}

but I would strongly recommend running the command ''vimtutor'' after opening vim for the first time to get acquainted with this often quirky editor. Other excellent choices for editor would be jed, nano, pico or even gvim.
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slrn will need to know where the news server is and the recommended way to do this is to place this address in your .bashrc file:

{{{
# Sets the News Server Environment as required by slrn
NNTPSERVER='my.news.server' && export NNTPSERVER
}}}

Obviously you will need to substitute details of ''your'' news server where 'my.news.server' is quoted above.
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Ubuntu is fortunate in that for the most part modern versions of slrn are included in the repositories from Intrepid onwards. So all that is required to install slrn is:

{{{
sudo apt-get install slrn
}}}

(For those who wish to live closer to the cutting edge of slrn development details can be seen below for accessing the slrn subversion repository.) Once this is done the next step is to setup the vital configuration file ~/.slrnrc.
Line 81: Line 105:

{{{
zcat /usr/share/doc/slrn/examples/slrn.rc.gz > $HOME/.slrnrc
}}}

{{{
wget http://slrn.sourceforge.net/downloads/slrn.rc -O $HOME/.slrnrc
}}}

This page has drawn heavily from information contained on the slrn website and the Ubuntu Forums slrn guide. Thanks to the authors of both of these for the generous permission to use their work!

What is slrn?

slrn ('S-Lang read news') is a console based newsreader which is used to access Usenet newsgroup messages. Beside the usual features of a newsreader slrn also supports scoring rules to highlight, sort or kill articles based on information from their header. It is highly customizable, allows free key-bindings and can easily be extended using the sophisticated S-Lang macro language.

Website: http://slrn.sourceforge.net/

Some Preparation

slrn is a relatively complex piece of software to install and setup correctly, somr preparation work is involved before installing slrn itself:

Set a FQDN

The best setup of slrn requires your computer to have a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). A default Ubuntu setup will often not have this set and the setting in /etc/hosts will look something like this:

127.0.0.1       localhost
127.0.1.1       desktop

This should be altered to reflect your own unique FQDN. For this you have 3 good choices:

  1. If you own your own Domain Name use this in conjunction with a subdomain and the hostname of your computer.
  2. Use a service such as dyndns.org which will give you a domain name for free.

  3. Use the news service individual.net which will give you a free FQDN.

Once this is in place alter the /etc/hosts file to reflect the FQDN with the following syntax:

127.0.0.1       localhost
127.0.1.1       desktop.your.domain     desktop

It is well worthwhile to set your your system correctly in this way and especially worthwhile to ensure that the FQDN is both unique and authentic.

Install msmtp

It is usually not good Usenet etiquette to send an email reply rather than post directly to the newsgroup. On rare occasions however this may be required and for this to succeed a suitable sending agent must be installed. The easiest and most flexible of these is msmtp and it can easily be set to deliver via a Gmail account which I demonstrate below. To install:

sudo apt-get install msmtp ca-certificates

A configuration file is required:

touch $HOME/.msmtprc
touch $HOME/.msmtp.log
chmod 0600 $HOME/.msmtprc

and the following details will need to be added to this configuration file:

account default              
host smtp.gmail.com          
port 587                     
from full.gmail.address@gmail.com 
tls on                       
tls_starttls on              
tls_trust_file /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
auth on                     
user gmail.username        
password mypassword       
logfile ~/.msmtp.log

Note: You will need to place your own values for from, user and password. Don't feel obligated to use Gmail as msmtp will work with most mail accounts. This completes the set for msmtp and it remains only to add a reference to msmtp in the .slrnrc file which will be explained later in this guide.

Choose an Editor

slrn does not come with an editor so either the system's default editor will be used or an editor must be specified from the slrn configuration file. For the purposes of this page the venerable editor vim will be used:

sudo apt-get install vim

but I would strongly recommend running the command vimtutor after opening vim for the first time to get acquainted with this often quirky editor. Other excellent choices for editor would be jed, nano, pico or even gvim.

Set the NNTP Environment Variable

slrn will need to know where the news server is and the recommended way to do this is to place this address in your .bashrc file:

# Sets the News Server Environment as required by slrn
NNTPSERVER='my.news.server' && export NNTPSERVER

Obviously you will need to substitute details of your news server where 'my.news.server' is quoted above.

Install slrn

Ubuntu is fortunate in that for the most part modern versions of slrn are included in the repositories from Intrepid onwards. So all that is required to install slrn is:

sudo apt-get install slrn

(For those who wish to live closer to the cutting edge of slrn development details can be seen below for accessing the slrn subversion repository.) Once this is done the next step is to setup the vital configuration file ~/.slrnrc.

Setup the ~/.slrnrc file

zcat /usr/share/doc/slrn/examples/slrn.rc.gz > $HOME/.slrnrc

wget http://slrn.sourceforge.net/downloads/slrn.rc -O $HOME/.slrnrc

Run slrn for the first time

Installing the svn slrn

Jaunty Jackalope and Karmic Koala feature reasonably modern versions of slrn but for those who have a hunger for the cutting edge it is possible to run the development version of slrn by accessing its subversion repository. Both compiling and subversion tools will be needed as well as the required S-Lang library:

sudo apt-get install build-essential subversion libslang2-dev checkinstall

With these files in place the subversion slrn can be downloaded and compiled as follows:

svn co https://slrn.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/slrn/trunk slrn
cd slrn
./configure
make
sudo checkinstall --install=yes --fstrans=no

The installation can be subsequently updated by changing to the source code directory, running svn up and recompiling. There is of course absolutely no guarantee that this code will be stable and of course this is half the fun!

External Links

slrn (last edited 2022-06-07 09:29:58 by andrew-david-strong)