Hi all,

To facilitate the configuration, wouldn't a generator be useful for news admins?

I mean either a web page (in PHP or like) or an interactive script
shipped with INN. I personally think the web page is better as you can
easily use the button back in your navigator to try other settings, and
it is more user-friendly for new news admins.

A simple HTML form with fields to fill and boxes to check:
- DNS or IP of incoming connection to the peer
- DNS or IP of outgoing connection to the peer (which may the same)
- port for outgoing connection
- feed path of the peer
- newsgroups to feed
- text-only? (checkbox)
- local newsgroups to exclude
- maximum article size in bytes wanted by the peer
- password to authenticate (leave empty if no authentication is required)
- limit to the number of maximum connections
...

Which will generate the 3 samples to copy/paste into the config files.




And... same thing for readers.conf :-)


I think it is the sort of thing that would help news admins, and
experiment with different options to see the resulted readers.conf and
have a working one quickly.
And according to the needs, new options or more complex cases (beyond
the common ones) could be added to the readers.conf generator.


Such a configuration file generator would perhaps be far better than
anything we could provide in (too dense or too long) documentation.

Any comments?

A quick attempt here (CSS and display not finalized):
http://usenet.trigofacile.com/inn/peering-conf-generator.php

--
Julien ÉLIE

« Une fois rien, c'est rien ; deux fois rien, c'est pas beaucoup, mais
pour trois fois rien, on peut déjà acheter quelque chose, et pour pas
cher. » (Raymond Devos)

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Le 15/01/2022 à 12:11, Julien ÉLIE a écrit :

Hi all,

To facilitate the configuration, wouldn't a generator be useful for news admins?

I'm no fond of this sort of things. Do not fix the
language/comprehension problem

but others may differ :-)

jdd

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Julien <iulius@nom-de-mon-site.com.invalid> wrote:

Hi all,

To facilitate the configuration, wouldn't a generator be useful for news >admins?

I mean either a web page (in PHP or like) or an interactive script
shipped with INN. I personally think the web page is better as you can >easily use the button back in your navigator to try other settings, and
it is more user-friendly for new news admins. . . .

Nothing beats the well-documented rc file with choices offered on each
field with an explanation of dependencies. Then a simple key word search
on one page makes an explanation findable. A Web interface cannot be
assumed to offer the same level of ease of finding the documentation.

I assume the Web interface would be in addition to.

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On 1/15/22 4:11 AM, Julien ÉLIE wrote:

Hi all,

Hi,

To facilitate the configuration, wouldn't a generator be useful for news admins?

I think a well executed configuration generator or management system
/could/ be useful for new and maybe even experienced admins.

I also think that a configuration generator / management system could
likely integrate with most INN installations with relative easy. As in
locate the files and then edit them as necessary.

Aside: This is the type of thing I was alluding to when referencing xfree86config from years ago.

I mean either a web page (in PHP or like) or an interactive script
shipped with INN.  I personally think the web page is better as you can easily use the button back in your navigator to try other settings, and
it is more user-friendly for new news admins.

I would much rather see the shell based utility /first/. After all,
that's where the files that need to be modified are going to be
interacted with.

I'm also not a fan of web things.

A simple HTML form with fields to fill and boxes to check:

It's relatively simple to ask the user with something like the following
in a terminal.

Question that you are being asked about.
The default is:
Your options are:
Your current setting is:

It's also fairly easy to get the current setting from the file(s) in
question. The web interface is going to be lacking that without a lot
more work and a likely worse experience in the web UI.

And... same thing for readers.conf :-)

I feel like there more that will need to be configured.

I think it is the sort of thing that would help news admins, and
experiment with different options to see the resulted readers.conf and
have a working one quickly.

I agree that something /could/ help those that don't want to read
comments in files / man pages /at/ /the/ /time/.

Such a configuration file generator would perhaps be far better than
anything we could provide in (too dense or too long) documentation.

I think a well executed configuration generator or management system
/could/ be useful for new and maybe even experienced admins.

Any comments?

I *STRONGLY* favor the utility that is run in shell over the web interface.

A quick attempt here (CSS and display not finalized):
  http://usenet.trigofacile.com/inn/peering-conf-generator.php

My preference for a shell utility not withstanding, I like the concept.

I've also thought about something similar as a form for new perspective
peers to use to fill out when requesting peering with me. But I've not
yet found the requisite number of Round-2-Its. Mostly because the
demand is low enough that I haven't yet bothered.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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On 1/15/22 8:47 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Nothing beats the well-documented rc file with choices offered on each
field with an explanation of dependencies. Then a simple key word
search on one page makes an explanation findable. A Web interface
cannot be assumed to offer the same level of ease of finding the documentation.

I too like well documented configuration files.

Though I /strongly/ prefer that the documentation in configuration files
is a reminder while being abridged with references to the unabridged documentation. E.g.

# <option name> configured <what the option controls>
# Possible options are:
# <option 1> <syntax elements>
# <option 2> <different syntax>
# <option 3> <third syntax>
# The default <default option> is used if <option name> is unspecified.
# See <document name> <document section> for more details.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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On 2022-01-15, Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

Nothing beats the well-documented rc file with choices offered on each
field with an explanation of dependencies. Then a simple key word search
on one page makes an explanation findable. A Web interface cannot be
assumed to offer the same level of ease of finding the documentation.

I like this as well, but in my experience, eventually drift happens
between available choices and documentation. Links to the long-form documentation would also be fantastic.

I assume the Web interface would be in addition to.

I like the idea of a Web config generator interface, it would be more
friendly to folks with modern expectations. It shouldn't be that hard
to create a script and have the web app/page just feed answers into
a CLI tool.

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Hi,
Julien ÉLIE a écrit :

To facilitate the configuration, wouldn't a generator be useful for news admins?

it is more user-friendly for new news admins.

It's the biginning which is really hard to understood (after, you think that you understand...).

A simple HTML form with fields to fill and boxes to check:

I will try it when I will be on a real computer.

- feed path of the peer

It may be unecessary at the first biginning?
And you can include some specials paths to filter the content of the feed.
I don't know how to make filter for Path with '!'.

Which will generate the 3 samples to copy/paste into the config files.

And... same thing for readers.conf :-)

Oh great news, it is very difficult this one !

A quick attempt here (CSS and display not finalized):
http://usenet.trigofacile.com/inn/peering-conf-generator.php

I will test it.

--
Stéphane
Sorry for my bad english.

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Il 15/01/22 12:11, Julien ÉLIE ha scritto:

To facilitate the configuration, wouldn't a generator be useful for news admins?

this is a good idea, imho

I'm willing to write the code if no one else makes the effort.

At the same time it would be useful to ascertain whether it is a
security gamble nowadays to run a web server as user 'news' or to make
inn configuration files writable by user 'www-data'. If there are no
major security problems, it is not impossible to write a php script that handles all of the inn configuration.

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On 1/16/22 12:55 PM, Aioe wrote:

At the same time it would be useful to ascertain whether it is a
security gamble nowadays to run a web server as user 'news' or to make
inn configuration files writable by user 'www-data'.

I would avoid doing that for that very reason if I were given a choice.

I'd likely use some sort of message passing. As in have the web server
record the desired changes somewhere and then have something, e.g. a
cron job, running as the news user read the queued change request.

This would provide a modicum of isolation and allow the cron job to
apply some sanity checking to the queued request. This would also
prevent the web server from having write access to other INN files.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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Le 19/01/2022 à 19:15, Julien ÉLIE a écrit :

Hi Paolo,

To facilitate the configuration, wouldn't a generator be useful for
news admins?

this is a good idea, imho

I'm willing to write the code if no one else makes the effort.

That would be great! If you have a bit of spare time, do not hesitate
to do that. I really think it will be helpful to news admins.

notice than after rereading my own note page, there are not so many
setup to make, so the problem is mostly a documentation problem: it's
thrilling not to know what system to use, because usenet being so shared system, the fear is to broke other's servers :-)

thanks for the useful work
jdd

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Hi Paolo,

To facilitate the configuration, wouldn't a generator be useful for
news admins?

this is a good idea, imho

I'm willing to write the code if no one else makes the effort.

That would be great! If you have a bit of spare time, do not hesitate
to do that. I really think it will be helpful to news admins.

--
Julien ÉLIE

« Love is blind but marriage is an eye-opener. »

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On 1/15/22 11:11, Julien ÉLIE wrote:

Hi all,

To facilitate the configuration, wouldn't a generator be useful for news admins?

I mean either a web page (in PHP or like) or an interactive script
shipped with INN.  I personally think the web page is better as you can easily use the button back in your navigator to try other settings, and
it is more user-friendly for new news admins.

[...]

Such a configuration file generator would perhaps be far better than
anything we could provide in (too dense or too long) documentation.

Any comments?

Moar. of. this.

A quick attempt here (CSS and display not finalized):
  http://usenet.trigofacile.com/inn/peering-conf-generator.php

You are superhero.

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