First you need to install it. You can get the source from the Innd homepage, this guide deals with version 2.1 so get that if you can. There are substantial differences in the formats for various configuration files between 2.1 and pre 2.0 versions.
Once you've untarred the source into a suitable directory you need to decide
where you're going to install everything. For the purposes of this guide I'm
going to assume everything goes in the directory /opt/news, except
the news spool (/var/spool/news), the database files
(/var/lib/news), the log directory (/var/log/news) and
the pid file (/var/lib/news/run). It is also a good idea to
compile in perl filtering.
Firstly, if you haven't already, add a news user and group so
you don't run innd as root. Also it's a good idea to set up aliases for
news and usenet so email sent to these accounts is
read by someone.
For installation directories as above you need to run configure as:
./configure --with-perl --prefix=/opt/news --with-spool-dir=/var/spool/news
--with-db-dir=/var/lib/news --with-run-dir=/var/lib/news/run
--with-log-dir=/var/log/news
If that's successful you should be able to do make && make
install to compile and install innd. You should now create a base active
file, /var/lib/news/active containing the following:
control 0000000000 0000000001 y
junk 0000000000 0000000001 y
test 0000000000 0000000001 y
to 0000000000 0000000001 y
All of innd's configuration files (including active and the
ones discussed below) should be owned by news.news and
readable by this user. In addition active needs to be
writable by the news user.
Once you've set up the active file run
makehistory which will be in /opt/news/bin
for the above example installation directories. This will create a
default history database in /var/lib/news. Depending on
which version of Innd you are using you may also need to move the
.hash, .dir and .index files into place. makehistory may
create history.n.dir and so on; if it does simply move it
to history.dir and similarly for the others it's
created.