InterNetNews is abbreviated INN, which is pronounced as  the  three
letters,  eye en en.  It is a Usenet transport and expiration system for
larger Unix systems where NNTP is used for most Usenet traffic.

     This document is not a tutorial on Usenet.  If you do not have much
Usenet experience, you should read Using UUCP and Usenet, ISBN 0-937175-
10-2.  You might also find it useful to read Managing  UUCP  and  Usenet
(get the most recent edition available), ISBN 0-937175-48-X.  Both books
are  published  by  O'Reilly  &  Associates;  send   inquiries   to   to
<nuts@ora.com>.  There is a chapter on INN in The Internet Connection: A
Guide to Connectivity and Configuration,  ISBN  0-201-54237-4  by  Smoot
Carl-Mitchell and John S. Quarterman.  It is being published by Addison-
Wesley and will be available in early 1994 or at the end of 1993.

     You should know BSD-derived TCP/IP -- at least be comfortable  with
host   names  and  dotted-quad  addresses.   If  you  have  installation
problems, you should know about Unix-domain stream and datagram  sockets
and  the  like.   In  addition  to any documentation available from your
vendor, you might find it useful to read the two IPC tutorials in   Unix
Programmer's  Manual:   Supplementary  Documents  1.   Copies   can   be
purchased    from    the   Usenix   Association;   send   inquiries   to
<office@usenix.org>.

     There are two RFCs that are important to  InterNetNews.   RFC  1036
describes  the format of Usenet articles.  It is incomplete and has some
errors, but it is the only formal document available.  RFC  977  defines
NNTP,  the  Network  News  Transfer  Protocol.   RFCs are available from
several places, including anonymous FTP to nnsc.nsf.net, where they  can
be  found  in the directory rfc.  Both RFCs are currently being revised.
The 1036 revision is most likely going to be a ``tightening-up'';  since

INN  already  has a strict interpretation of the RFC, this revision will
probably not affect InterNetNews very much.  The 977 revision is  adding
new features and facilities, and while INN will not provide all of them,
they will have some impact.

     InterNetNews does things differently from other news software.  The
most  common Usenet systems for Unix are B2.11 and C News.  Both of them
require a separate NNTP implementation.  The one everyone uses is called
``NNTP.''    Because   this  is  confusing  (they  don't  call  sendmail
``SMTP''), I will refer to it as the ``reference implementation.''   You

generally do not need to know anything about these other systems, but if
you are curious, the official sites are as follows:

     Package      Host                  Directory
     C News      ftp.cs.toronto.edu    pub/c-news
     B2.11        ftp.uu.net            news/bnews-2.11
     nntp         ftp.academ.com        public/nntp

You might find the files doc/biblio, doc/problems, and doc/rfcerrata  in
the   C   News   distribution   worthwhile  reading.   The  first  is  a
bibliography, the second discusses known C News  porting  problems  (see
the  DBZ sections in particular, and ignore most of the shell comments),
while the third lists some technical and  philosophical  errors  in  RFC
1036.

     The commands below assume that $inn is an abbreviation for the  top
of the InterNetNews source tree.

     INN could not have been  written  without  access  to  the  freely-
redistributable  sources  of  B2.11, C News, and NNTP.  In particular, I
want to thank Rick Adams; Geoff Collyer  and  Henry  Spencer;  and  Stan
Barber,  Erik  Fair,  Brian  Kantor,  and  Phil  Lapsley.  The financial
support of UUNET Technologies is also greatly  appreciated.   The  beta-
test sites gave invaluable feedback.