Subject: pine 3.91 for email only, no usenet?

From: [email-masked] ()
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 1995 18:54:25 GMT

Hi!

We use Pine 3.91 as our mail program for our subscribers. These
accounts allow unlimited time/services. ie people often use pine to
read the news. We would like to setup some email-only accounts. How
might we disable news-reading with pine in these selected accounts?

thanks

---

From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 1995 09:33:15 +0100 (BST)

One way (perhaps not the best, but it's early in the day here and my 
brain hasn't got going yet! :-) is to use the "fixed" configuration file.

This is a file into which you can put system-wide settings which then are 
used, and cannot be over-ridden, by users.  The standard place for this 
file is "/usr/local/lib/pine.conf.fixed" on UNIX versions of Pine.

Depending on whether you are just trying to limit *posting* news articles 
or also *reading* news articles you will need to have either one or two 
settings present in the fixed configuration file:

nntp-server
-----------
This variable can set up to point to an NNTP (News) server.  By setting 
it a user can both read and (if the news server permits it) post News 
articles.  If you want to stop people posting you will need to force this 
to be an empty value.

news-collections
----------------
It is also possible to specify an NNTP server in the list of news
collections.  (Indeed it is also possible to read News over IMAP if the
IMAP server provides the service.) This is done by having a collection
defined along these lines:
	News {news.blah.blah.blah/nntp}[]	...for NNTP protocol
or	News *[]				...for IMAP protocol
Thus you will have to force this variable to be an empty value too if you 
want to prevent news *reading* (this variable does not enable posting).

Note that the values in the "fixed" configuration file are system-wide.  
Or, more accurately, referenced by all copies of Pine compiled to use 
that particular file for fixed settings.  This means if you want some 
instances of Pine to be fully configurable by users, and some to be 
restricted so they can read and/or post News then you will need to 
compile up separate versions of Pine (each using a different file for the 
"fixed" settings) and use one version for each class of people 
(remembering to prevent access to the other version, of course!).

Mike Brudenell                                         <[email-masked]>
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