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servers.conf

Backend Server Configuration

All backend servers are configured in the servers.conf. As with most other configuration files there is one special server which is called default. The default server contains no Hostname or Groups statements, but contains all other possibly needed parameters.

The following example demonstrates the most basic configuration. A binaries server and a text server. The textserver also has the descriptions and knows about active.times.

server default
  Port          119
  Timeout       300
  Descriptions  False
  ActiveTimes   False
  Type          Spool
  Policy        Single
  SplitList     False
end

server bunnies
  Groups        *bin*
  Hostname      bin.example.com
end

server text
  Groups        *
  Hostname      text.example.com
end

server active
  Groups        *.*
  Hostname      text.example.com
  Descriptions  True
  ActiveTimes   True
end

Please make sure that you retrieve active.times and newsgroups information from atleast one server. This must be done by setting the options activetimes and descriptions to true. Also note that the most significant servers are listed at the bottom. If you have servers for single newsgroups or patterns thereof put them at the top.

Option Descriptions (todo)

SplitList If you have a backend server which doesn't support the LIST ACTIVE command with multiple patterns, set this option to True so multiple LIST commands will be done for each part of the pattern. For Diablo put it to 1, for INN put it to 0.

Backup and Load Balancing Levels and Policies

You can configure backup or balanced servers by using the same Groups values. Policy can be either backup or balance.

The backup and balancing checks take place upon connecting to a group. Only when a group is selected nntpswitch checks if we need to (re)connect to a different backend server. A backup server is used when the primary server fails, failure is tested on every connect and the primary server will be retried first at all times. The balancing takes place by just selecting a different server on each connect. Only if one of the balancing servers failes, nntpswitch just uses the backup mechanism to find another server.

An example of 2 backup servers. Each connection will try "movies1" first. In case of some connection or NNTP error, the next server "movies2" is tried.

server bin1
  Hostname      binaries1.local
  Groups        *
  Policy        backup
end

server bin2
  Hostname      binaries2.local
  Groups        *
  Policy        backup
end

An example of 2 load-balanced servers. Each connection to the backend server will connect to the other one.

server bin1
  Hostname      binaries1.local
  Groups        *bin*
  Policy        balance
end

server bin2
  Hostname      binaries2.local
  Groups        *bin*
  Policy        balance
end

Note in the above examples, the server "movies1" is most likely used for updating the groups with the updategroups command.

Local Dreader

If you have a diablo based setup with hash based spools and standalone overview servers, you can use a local dreader to handle server connections. When someone issues a group command and retrieves an article, nntpswitch will connect to the spool server which matches the pattern. However if someone requests an article by Message-ID nntpswitch loops to all spoolservers to find the message-id. If you have a local dreader running on a different port you can use that dreader to handle message-id lookups. See also the LocalDreader nntpswitch.conf option

To setup a local dreader handling message-id's but no groups configure it like this:

server localhost
    hostname    127.0.0.1
    groups      !*
    port        120
    policy      single
end

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