Compilation and installation notes for tin - 2002-06-04 (still incomplete!) ------------------------------------------------------- Note: Tin requires a valid fully qualified domain name for the host you are running tin on. IF YOU DON'T HAVE A HOST NAME WITH A VALID DOMAIN GO AND GET ONE AND CONFIGURE YOUR HOST -- NOW! (This will prevent problems with other software, too.) Otherwise users may get "Invalid Sender" error messages and won't be able to post using the internal inews. You may optionally have a look at the tin.defaults file (watch out for disable_sender) and install it in the --with-defaults-dir directory using `make install_sysdefs`. Note: The section 'News machine names' is now at the beginning as it seemed to be the most sought after section. The following configure options and defines are documented in detail: --------------------------------------------------------------------- --disable-fcntl --program-prefix --disable-included-msgs --program-suffix --enable-8bit-keys --program-transform-name --enable-append-pid --with-coffee --enable-break-long-lines --with-curses-dir --enable-broken-listgroup-fix --with-dbmalloc --enable-broken-system-fix --with-defaults-dir --enable-color --with-dmalloc --enable-curses --with-domain-name --enable-debug --with-editor --enable-echo --with-gpg --enable-etiquette --with-included-gettext --enable-fascist-newsadmin --with-inews-dir --enable-flock --with-inn-nntplib --enable-inverse-video --with-iso-to-ascii --enable-locale --with-ispell --enable-lockf --with-libdir --enable-mh-mail-handling --with-libiconv-prefix --enable-mime-strict-charset --with-mailbox --enable-nls --with-mailer --enable-nntp --with-metamail --enable-nntp-only --with-mime-default-charset --enable-pgp-gpg --with-ncurses --enable-piping --with-nntp-default-server --enable-posting --with-nov-dir --enable-printing --with-nov-fname --enable-prototypes --with-pcre --enable-shell-escape --with-pgp --enable-warnings --with-pgpk --enable-xhdr-xref --with-screen --exec-prefix --with-shell --mandir --with-spooldir --prefix --with-trace ENFORCE_RFC1034 HAVE_UUDEVIEW_H EVIL_INSIDE NNTP_INEWS FOLLOW_USEFOR_DRAFT NNTP_SERVER_FILE FORGERY PROFILE REQUIRE_BRACKETS_IN_DOMAIN_LITERAL SMALL_MEMORY_MACHINE HAVE_LIBUU XFACE_ABLE USE_CANLOCK HAVE_BROKEN_SSCANF Not yet documented configure options and defines: ------------------------------------------------- TIN related: --enable-ipv6 --with-socks5 --with-socks --with-sum DEBUG MATCH_TAR_PATTERN DEBUG_NEWSRC NEW_HASH_METHOD DEBUG_REFS (see doc/DEBUG_REFS) OPTIMIZE_JUST_STAR JUST_TESTING REREAD_ACTIVE_FILE_SECS USE_UTF8_HORIZONTAL_ELLIPSIS System related: --datadir --localstatedir --includedir --oldincludedir --infodir --sbindir --install-prefix --sharedstatedir --libdir --srcdir --libexecdir --sysconfdir --with-x --with-Xaw3d --with-neXtaw --with-XawPlus --with-build-cc --with-build-cflags --with-build-cppflags --with-build-ldflags --with-build-libs --build --host --target News machine names ------------------ --with-domain-name (default: unset) Defines the name of your news gateway machine. Useful if you don't want your internal network visible to the outside world, or if your inews script or NNTP server rewrites your address for you. If the first letter of the string is a '/' the gateway name will be read from the specified file. Example: If you are on machine 'tragic' at network domain 'confusion.com', Tin will assume your From: line should read "user@tragic.confusion.com". If your inews script instead rewrites your address as "user@confusion.com", you will be unable to cancel your own postings. To make your posts and cancels work properly, configure using --with-domain-name="confusion.com". General Notes on Building Tin ----------------------------- Tin has been compiled on a wide range of Un*x machines with cc and gcc. A list of these machines can be found at the end of this file. This file is long (so was the yellow brick road) but please read it all as it could save you problems later and we don't want an unhappy ending do we? :-) Tin can be compiled to read news in any of the following ways: o locally from your machines news spool dir (default /var/spool/news, can be set via --with-spool-dir). o locally and remotely via NNTP (rtin or tin -r option) (--enable-nntp). o remotely via NNTP (--enable-nntp-only). If the remote server supports NOV overview indexing, then tin will retrieve overview data on the fly using the NNTP XOVER extension. Otherwise tin will create its own NOV style index files on the local machine for each user in ${TIN_INDEX_NEWSDIR-"${TIN_HOMEDIR-"$HOME"}/.tin"}/.news/ Many machines require the name of the news gateway machine or the news domain to be set via the --with-domain-name configure options. This is true of both NNTP and local news systems. Building the Normal version: ---------------------------- 1) Type './configure --help' to see which options are needed for your local setup. These options are described below, too. 2) Change conf-tin for your needs or run ./configure with all needed options. 3) Type 'make build' to build tin in the src/ directory. Alternatively go to the src subdirectory and type 'make'. 4) Type 'make install' to install. 5) Have a look at doc/tin.defaults and set options as you need them (if they differ from your compile time options). If you make any changes, type 'make install_sysdefs' afterwards. Testing Tin ----------- Of course you _were_ going to test it before installing it for anyone else to use, weren't you? This is just a little reminder and some suggestions on what to test first, and where to look first if it's broken. Things to test: 1) Check that you can read news from several local and world-wide groups. If this fails, check that the NNTP define directives are correctly set, and for local news systems, that the News directory structure define directives are correctly set. For NNTP versions, check that the server is actually running and can be connected to from your machine. This should help you find and fix some of the most common problems. If reading news works fine, then: 2) Check that you can post a test message to a local distribution group, preferably a test-only group. (Remember, the world does not care to know whether you are testing Tin.) If it fails, check that the --with-inews-dir option is correctly set, that NNTP_INEWS is correctly set, and that the News machine name define directives are correctly set. If possible, check whether you can post via some other mechanism, such as Pnews. This should help you isolate and fix the most common problems. If posting news works fine, then: 3) Check that you can cancel one of your test postings. If not, it is almost certain that your News machine defines need to be set correctly, because Tin thinks your From: line is different from what has actually been posted. See the section on News machine names above and below. Further testing is desirable, but left to your individual conscience and ingenuity. Detailed list of configure options (beginning with '--') and compiler flags (-D directives): Compiler and machine options ---------------------------- --enable-warnings (default: off) Enable if you want to see all GCC compiler warnings during compilation. --enable-echo (default: on) Enable if you want to see full display compiling commands during compilation. --enable-prototypes (default: off) Enable if you want configure to check for various fallback prototype declarations. SMALL_MEMORY_MACHINE (default: not set) Define if you are running a machine with little memory (<4MB). Tin will run slightly slower but be more efficient in how memory is allocated and reclaimed. News directory structure ------------------------ --with-libdir=PATH (default: /usr/lib/news or not set) Define if news software is not in /usr/lib/news. (Only needed if not running --enable-nntp-only.) Compiled-in value can be overridden by setting the newslibdir entry in doc/tin.defaults (don't forget to 'make install_sysdefs' to install the tin.defaults file at a location where tin can find it!). --with-spooldir=PATH (default: /var/spool/news or not set) Define if news articles are not in /var/spool/news. (Only needed if not running --enable-nntp-only.) Compiled-in value can be overridden by setting the spooldir entry in tin.defaults (don't forget to 'make install_sysdefs' to install the tin.defaults file at a location where tin can find it!). --with-nov-dir=PATH (default: same as --with-spooldir) Define if news overview (NOV) files are not stored in SPOOLDIR. (only needed if not running --enable-nntp-only) Compiled-in value can be overridden by setting the overviewdir entry in tin.defaults (don't forget to 'make install_sysdefs' to install the tin.defaults file at a location where tin can find it!). --with-nov-fname=NAME (default: .overview or not set) Define if your news overview files are not named .overview. (Only needed if not running --enable-nntp-only.) Compiled-in value can be overridden by setting the overviewfile entry in tin.defaults (don't forget to 'make install_sysdefs' to install the tin.defaults file at a location where tin can find it!). --with-inews-dir=PATH (default: same as --with-libdir or /usr/lib/news) Define if the 'inews' program is not in the directory specified with --with-libdir (if not running --enable-nntp-only) or /usr/lib/news (if running --enable-nntp-only). Compiled-in value can be overridden by setting the inewsdir entry in tin.defaults (don't forget to 'make install_sysdefs' to install the tin.defaults file at a location where tin can find it!). NNTP - Reading & posting news ----------------------------- --enable-nntp (default: on) Enable if you wish to read news locally and remotely via a NNTP server. Disable if you only want to read from local spool. Note: If you disable this feature, you won't be able to connect to any NNTP server. --enable-nntp-only (default: off) Enable if you [want to | can] ONLY read news remotely via a NNTP server. --with-nntp-default-server (default: news.$DOMAIN_NAME) Defines the name of the default NNTP server that tin should connect to. Can be overridden by setting the environment variable NNTPSERVER. --enable-broken-listgroup-fix (default: off) Bypass a bug in some broken NNTPservers which need an extra GROUP command before accepting a LISTGROUP command. --with-inn-nntplib=PATH (default: not set) Define if you want to use the INN library functions GetConfigValue() & GetFQDN(). PATH must be the correct path to the INN library. --enable-xhdr-xref (default: on) If disabled, don't allow using XHDR XREF if XOVER doesn't work to mark crossposted articles as read in all groups. The following options determine which locking method should be used when appending posted or postponed messages to mailbox-style files. Tin will try each method that can be configured, in succession. If none of your selections can be configured, tin will try each possibility anyway. The intent of these options is to prevent particular locking methods from being configured into the executable. --disable-fcntl disable fcntl() locking --enable-lockf enable lockf() locking --enable-flock enable flock() locking NNTP_INEWS (default: set if using VMS, --enable-nntp, or enable-nntp-only; unset if not using NNTP) Define if you want to use the built-in NNTP POST routine so that you no longer have to rely on the mini-inews from NNTP to be installed on each client machine. Also check that --with-domain-name is correctly set to produce a correct From: headers for your site. If defined then the ~/.tin/tinrc variable "inews_prog" default will be set to --internal. The tinrc file is created automatically for each user the first time they use tin. NNTP_SERVER_FILE (default: /etc/nntpserver) Only define if your NNTP-server file is other than /etc/nntpserver. Options to set some default values ---------------------------------- --with-shell=PROG (default: sh, except on BSD where csh is used) Define the default shell which is used if the $SHELL variable is not set, and the user has not defined it in their tinrc file. Do not give the directory as part of the program name; the configure script will look for it in standard locations. --with-defaults-dir=PATH (default: /etc/tin) Define the directory for the tin.defaults file. With the entries in the tin.defaults you can set some machine specific options and override some compile time defaults. See the tin.defaults file in the doc directory for more information. --with-editor=PROG (default: empty) Define if the standard editor should be anything other than the value of your EDITOR or VISUAL environment variable or, at as the last resort, vi. You can also add some default command line options to the editor. Users can overwrite this value by setting default_editor_format in their tinrc file. --with-mailer=PROG (default: empty) Define the default mailer program. --with-mailbox=PATH (default: empty) Define the directory for incoming mailboxes. If none is given, /var/spool/mail, /usr/spool/mail, /var/mail, /usr/mail, and /mail are checked automatically. --enable-etiquette (default: on) If enabled, prints netiquette before posting by default. Users can turn this off by setting beginner_level to OFF in their tinrc. If disabled, netiquette is never displayed (cannot be turned on without recompiling). Input and screen output options ------------------------------- --enable-locale (default: on) If enabled, tin uses multi language support, as described in locale(7). If you don't have locale support installed on your system, try --disable-locale, otherwise you won't see any 8-bit-characters. See doc/umlauts.txt (english text) or doc/umlaute.txt (german text) for further information. --with-mime-default-charset=charset (default: US-ASCII) Define if your users usually post messages in another charset than US-ASCII. Europeans should use one of the ISO-8859-X series here. Compiled-in default value can be overridden by setting the mm_charset entry in tin.defaults (don't forget to 'make install_sysdefs' to install the tin.defaults file at a location where tin can find it!). Users can override this value by setting MM_CHARSET in the options menu or using the MM_CHARSET environment variable. --enable-mime-strict-charset (default: on) If this option is turned on, any characters of charsets other than that defined in MM_CHARSET will be considered non-displayable. If your standard encoding is ISO-8859-X then you probably want to disable this option. --with-iso-to-ascii=value (default: -1) Define if you want tin to do ISO-8859-1 to ASCII charset conversions by default for all groups. You must specify a value of "0-6" to get tin to use one of the following 7 conversion tables for different languages 0 replace 8-bit letters by 7-bit counterpart without diacritics (Ä -> A) and other characters by similar 7-bit ones (» -> >>) 1 same as 0, but use only one character (preserves layout) 2 convert 8-bit letters to 7-bit replacements (Ä -> Ae) (useful for Danish, Dutch, German, Norwegian and Swedish) 3 replace 8-bit letters by 7-bit ISO 646 characters (mostly for Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish) 4 convert 8-bit characters according to RFC 1345 5 build 8-bit characters by combining several 7-bit chars and using backspace (useful for printers) 6 ??? E.g., adding --with-iso-to-ascii=2 to the configure options would be useful in german language newsgroups. For more detailed info read the file ./doc/iso2asc.txt. Default value for --with-iso-to-ascii is "-1", which means no conversion at all. Users can override this value by setting an environment variable ISO2ASC. --with-curses-dir=dir (default: empty) If (n)curses is not installed in a standard location (i.e below /usr) you can specify it's installation directory here. --with-screen=type (default: termcap) This is a simpler way (than --with-ncurses and --enable-curses) to specify the screen library. If you give none of these options, the configure script will look for the termcap or terminfo interfaces, and attempt to use the most appropriate one that your system supports. The other screen types which you may select are: curses, ncurses, ncursesw, pdcurses. --with-ncurses Define this if you want to link with ncurses instead of termcap. Note: This is required on some Linux distributions (i.e., SuSE) where there is either a curses or termcap library which is not ncurses. If ncurses is installed as the curses library, this option is usually not needed. This option is depriciated, use --with-screen=ncurses (see above) instead. --enable-curses (default: off) Enable this if you wish to use the curses screen optimizing rather than termcap. This has been tested well starting with ncurses 4.1; it should work (except for mouse support and screen resizing) with SVr4 curses (Solaris 2.5 is known to have a bug in libc which prevents use of curses, ncurses works well on that platform). To build with ncurses screen optimizing, you must give both the --with-ncurses and --enable-curses options. This option is depriciated, use --with-screen=ncurses (see above) instead. --enable-inverse-video (default: on) Disable if you want inverse video and highlighted bar disabled by default. Can be toggled in tin by the 'I' command. Users can also set draw_arrow and inverse_ok variables in their tinrc to override this default. --enable-8bit-keys (default: on) Enable if your terminal generates 8-bit controls. For Unix systems we assume this may imply your arrow keys begin either with CSI (0x9b) or SS3 (0x8f). Most ANSI terminals generate 7-bit controls (e.g., CSI is "["), but some such as VT220 can be configured more efficiently to generate 8-bit prefix codes, saving a byte per control sequence. This applies to cursor movement at the same time. The actual codes are read from termcap (this does not affect the curses configuration). Feature options --------------- --enable-color (default: on) Enable if you want to have ANSI-color support. This works on most color displays and the color xterm. The color mode can be switched on/off in ~/.tin/tinrc (use_color) and can be toggled with option -a or key '&'. --enable-pgp-gpg (default: on) Use --disable-pgp-gpg to turn off all pgp/gpg support, use --with[out]-[pgp|pgpk|gpg] to select exactly one of the encryption systems! Once again: if you have more than one method installed on your system, _disable_ all but one of the offered pgp/pgp supports. --with-pcre[=PATH] (default: bundled copy of pcre) Define if you wish to use an externally-installed copy of PCRE (Perl-compatible regular expressions). If you specify a PATH, it should be the root of a directory containing the include- and lib-directories where PCRE is installed. If you do not specify a PATH, the makefile will use the standard locations for this library. Tin will build with PCRE 2.08 and later. --with-pgp=PATH (default: from system $PATH) Define if you have PGP-2 (Pretty Good Privacy encryption system) installed and want the option of checking signatures, extract keys, sign messages and add public key to messages. This is bound to the key 'g' or '^G'. Say --without-pgp if you don't want pgp-2 support. --with-pgpk=PATH (default: from system $PATH) Define if you have PGP-5 (Pretty Good Privacy encryption system) installed and want the option of checking signatures, extract keys, sign messages and add public key to messages. This is bound to the key 'g' or '^G'. Say --without-pgpk if you don't want pgp-5 support. --with-gpg=PATH (default: from system $PATH) Define if you have GPG (GNU Privacy Guard encryption system) installed and want the option of checking signatures, extract keys, sign messages and add public key to messages. This is bound to the key 'g' or '^G'. Say --without-gpg if you don't want gpg support. --with-ispell=PATH (default: set automatically) Define if you have ispell (interactive spell-checker) installed and want the option of checking your articles, mails before posting/mailing them. If found in search path, this is used automatically. --with-metamail=PATH (default: set automatically) Define if you want metamail display your MIME messages. If found in search path, this is used automatically. --enable-posting (default: on) If disabled, TIN does not allow posting/followup of articles. --enable-fascist-newsadmin (default: off) Enable if you want to restrict articles posted with your tin a bit to enforce some formal rules. This will change the following warnings to an error in the article checking routine therefore causing the user to reenter the editor and change the article or to abort posting: - Group(s) in Newsgroups: or Followup-To: header were not found in the sites' active file - Approved: header was found when user was in beginner level - Signature has more than MAX_SIG_LINES (see include/tin.h) lines - Crossposting without Followup-To: header - Followup-To: header with more than one newsgroup --enable-shell-escape (default: on) If disabled, do not allow shell escapes. Note: There may still be possibilities for users to start a shell (e.g. from within an editor or using a shell as the "editor"), even if you disable this feature here. They are just not able to use the '!' key to do so. --enable-piping (default: on) Disable if your system does not support piping of articles to shell commands or if you don't want your users to have such support. Note: There may still be possibilities for users to "pipe" an article to a command, even if you disable this feature. They are just not able to use the '|' key to do so. --enable-printing (default: on) Disable if your system does not support printing or if you don't want your users to have such support. Note: There may still be possibilities for users to print an article, even if you disable this feature. They are just not able to use the 'o' key to do so. --enable-mh-mail-handling (default: off) Enable if you want to use the MH style mail handling & reading code in mail.c. It should be noted that mail handling is not well tested and not yet fully implemented. You can expect errors if you use this option so let me know the problems by sending me a bug report ('R' bug command from within tin). See doc/reading-mail.txt for further information. --enable-nls (default: on) The --enable-nls option enables Native Language Support (NLS), which allows tin to run in languages other than American English. Native Language Support is enabled by default, the --disable-nls option disables NLS. --with-included-gettext (default:off) If NLS is enabled, the --with-included-gettext option causes the build procedure to prefer its copy of GNU gettext. --disable-included-msgs (default:off) If NLS is enabled, the --disable-included-msgs option causes the build procedure to assume message libraries are already installed, and to not build them. HAVE_LIBUU (default: set automatically) HAVE_UUDEVIEW_H (default: set automatically) Define *both* if you want to use libuu for uudecoding and collecting multipart binary articles (libuu is part of uudeview, which can be found at ). libuu must be somewhere in the library paths, uudeview.h somewhere in the include paths when compiling. If they are found there by configure, these defines are set automatically. Debug/test options ------------------ --with-dbmalloc (default: off) Link with Conor Cahill's dbmalloc library, used to check for memory leaks, incorrect frees, etc. --enable-debug (default: off) Define if you want tin to log debug information to files in /tmp. Activated by tin -Dn where n is 1 for NNTP only debug logging, n is 2 for logging most debug info, n is 3 for newsrc debugging and n is 4 for malloc debug logging. Debug files written to /tmp are ARTS, ACTIVE, BASE, NNTP, SAVE_COMP, BITMAP, MALLOC and FILTER. Depending on the debuglevel some files may not be generated. newsrc debugging also needs DEBUG_NEWSRC defined. --with-trace (default: off) Trace data which is formatted and written to the screen. Use this to debug changes to the curses or termcap interfaces. --with-dmalloc (default: off) Link with Gray Watson's dmalloc library, used to check for memory leaks, incorrect frees, etc. PROFILE profile time consuming operations Miscellaneous options --------------------- --enable-append-pid (default: on) Enable if you want tin to append its process id to any file that a user edits (.article, .cancel, .letter etc.). Highly recommended if a user wants to start several instances of tin at a time; otherwise files might be overwritten. --enable-break-long-lines (default: off) Enable if you want tin to break long MIME encoded header lines in accordance with RFC 2047 (i.e. after 76 characters) in postings as well as in e-mail. Default is to not break ("fold") such lines in news postings because some news servers and clients can't handle them very well (doing folding right seems to be a major problem). This option only affects headers in postings; e-mail headers are always folded if they have MIME encoded words and are longer than 76 characters. --enable-broken-system-fix (default: off) Ignore system()s return value. This is only needed on some very old OSs, e.g. NEXTSTEP3, SEIUX, DG/UX where the WIFEXITED()/WEXITSTATUS() macros do not work. --prefix=dirname Specify the toplevel installation directory. This is the recommended way to install tin into a directory other than the default. The toplevel installation directory defaults to /usr/local. --exec-prefix=dirname Specify the toplevel installation directory for architecture-dependent files. The default is prefix. --bindir=dirname Specify the installation directory for the executables called by users (such as tin and rtin). The default is exec-prefix/bin. --mandir=dirname Specify the installation directory for manual pages. The default is prefix/man. --program-prefix=prefix Tin supports transformations of its name when installing it. This option prepends prefix to the name of the program to be installed in bindir. For example, specifying --program-prefix=foo- would result in tin being installed as /usr/local/bin/foo-tin. --program-suffix=suffix Appends suffix to the name the program to be installed in bindir. For example, specifying --program-suffix=-1.5 would result in tin being installed as /usr/local/bin/tin-1.5 --program-transform-name=pattern sed script pattern to be applied to the name of the program to be install in bindir. pattern has to consist of one or more basic sed editing commands, separated by semicolons. For example, if you want tin program name to be transformed to the installed program /usr/local/bin/myowntin you could use the pattern --program-transform-name='s/^tin$/myowntin/' to achieve this effect. FORGERY Define if you want to be able to cancel postings you did not write yourself. The !cyberspam and cancel conventions are supported. Be careful with this feature, it should not be used in a free accessible tin. This feature does not work with INN using the INN-inews (when using without NNTP), because INN-inews rejects these cancels. ENFORCE_RFC1034 require domain name components not to start with a digit (GNKSA-check) REQUIRE_BRACKETS_IN_DOMAIN_LITERAL require domain literals to be enclosed in square brackets (GNKSA-check) TINC_DNS allow additional toplevel domains (GNKSA-check) EVIL_INSIDE let tin generate Message-IDs USE_CANLOCK turn on cancel-locks, you need to compile libcanlock first by running ./Build in the libcanlock dir or by using "make canlock" from the src dir. You also have to uncomment the CANLOCK/CANLIB lines in src/Makefile. FOLLOW_USEFOR_DRAFT issue a warning instead of an error-message if Newsgroups: or Followup-To:-header contains spaces, newlines or tabs. XFACE_ABLE Define if you have slrnface installed and want to use it to show X-Faces Compiled & installed -------------------- Tin was successfully built and installed on a variety of platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, BSDi, Darwin, Solaris, IRIX, HP-UX, Ultrix, Tru64, AIX, SINIX, UXP/V, SUPER-UX, Unicos, QNX, GNU Hurd, DG/UX, SEIUX, Openstep, MiNT and Cygwin. For a detailed list see