RumorMill Setup Documentation
The settings window provides access to a variety of settings to customize the behavior of your RumorMill server.
Max Number of active newsfeeds: This preference permits you to restrict the number of remote newsfeeds actively pushing articles to your server. This preference can be useful because some servers will open multiple connections to your server in order to send articles more rapidly.
Server Port: For a variety of reasons you may wish to change the TCP/IP port RumorMill uses to communicate with clients (and RumorMill Setup). For instance, you may wish to run multiple copies of RumorMill with different configurations for each one. To change the port you need to change the this number, save the changes to RumorMill and then quit and Restart RumorMill. RumorMill will not change the port until you quit and restart the server.
Host Path Name: In some RumorMill installations, it's not possible to get a fixed IP address and/or an assigned host name. In this case, it's nice to have a host name to inserted into the "Path:" header. The value of this field is used in the Path: header, but only when no DNS name can be obtained.
Disconnect idle clients after: Sometimes you may find that clients connect to your server and remain idle for long periods of time. This can be prevented by specifying how long clients may remain idle before RumorMill disconnects them. A value of zero specifies that clients are never disconnected.
Help Note: Is only seen by NNTP Clients, it should not be seen by anyone reading articles. You should include an E-Mail address for other news administrators to contact in case of problems.
Enable Streaming for Sending: Selecting this option allows RumorMill to forward articles using the streaming protocol, but only if the downstream server permits streaming.
Enable Streaming for Receiving: Selecting this option allows RumorMill to receive articles using the streaming protocol.
Hide the "control" group(s) from users: Selecting this option tells RumorMill hide the "control" group so that users don't see it in their news reader clients.
EMail nightly statistics to Sys Admin: Selecting this option informs RumorMill to send an EMail containing the daily statistics to the System Adminstrator's EMail address. The System Adminstrator EMail address and the SMTP Host must be specified for this option to function.
EMail control articles to Sys Admin: Selecting this option tells RumorMill to send EMail copies of all control articles (attempts to delete or create news groups) to the System Administrator's EMail address. The System Adminstrator EMail address and the SMTP Host must be specified for this option to function.
EMail group changes to Sys Admin: By selecting this option, RumorMill will query each upstream newsfeed once a day for new groups. Groups created since the last query will be reported to the System Administrator in an EMail. This EMail will also list groups in RumorMill's database that are not in the database of the newsfeed. The System Adminstrator EMail address and the SMTP Host must be specified for this option to function.
Enable detailed logging: Use this option when you're having difficulties with RumorMill. With this option enabled, additional information will be placed into the RumorMill Log that can be helpful in determining the cause of problems. Detailed logging can be temporarily enabled or disabled by using the Detailed Logging item on RumorMill's File menu.
Enable server mode: Selecting this option tells RumorMill to not present any modal dialogs that might interrupt the processing in other applications.
Limit use of IHAVE to newsfeed hosts: Selecting this option prevents clients other than specified newsfeeds from using the IHAVE NNTP command. Selecting this option is highly recommended as one of the ways a System Administrator can limit spam.
Only forward local postings: Normally articles received by RumorMill (by any means) are automatically forwarded to downstream servers (subject to group specifications etc.). This preference allows the administrator to limit forwarded articles to just those locally generated (not received from other servers). This can be very useful when your copy of RumorMill is not used as a newsfeed to downstream servers, but you wish to have local postings forwarded to other NNTP servers.
Allow SIVC: Simple Internet Version Control should tell you when a new version of RumorMill is released. SIVC does not distribute any information about your computer - it just checks to see what is the latest version of RumorMill.