Understanding and Managing NNTP Virtual Servers

An Overview on the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) Service

The NNTP service is a component of IIS that supports client/server and server/server elements of NNTP. Through the NNTP service, you can implement private news servers to host discussion groups, or you can implement public news servers to provide customer support and help resources to Internet users. You can specify that users need to be authenticated to both read and post to items to newsgroups, or you can allow access to everybody. The NNTP service can also integrate with the Windows Indexing Service for indexing of newsgroup content. It is also fully integrated with event and performance monitoring of Windows Server 2003. To connect to the NNTP service on an IIS machine, you can use Microsoft Outlook Express. By using Outlook Express, you would be able to download a list of newsgroups, read existing messages, post new messages and reply to messages.

To configure and manage the NNTP service on IIS, you can use the IIS Manager or the Web browser NNTP Service Manager (HTML). However, in order to use NNTP as a component of IIS, you first have to install the NNTP service. The Default NNTP Virtual Server is automatically created when you install the NNTP service.

The NNTP directory structure is also created with a root folder of \Inetpub\nntpfile when you first install the NNTP service. The NNTP directory structure includes the following folders:

In addition to the NNTP directory structure, four newsgroups are created when you install the NNTP service:

The Control.cancel, Control.newgroup, and Control.rmgroup newsgroups are utilized for control messages sent by NNTP virtual servers and NNTP clients to communicate with the NNTP service. The Microsoft.public.ins newsgroup is a sample newsgroup which you can use to test the posting of messages to the NNTP virtual server.

How to install the NNTP Service

To install the NNTP service,

  1. Place the Windows Server 2003 CD-ROM in the CD-ROM drive.
  2. Click Start, Control Panel, and click Add/Remove Programs.
  3. Click Add/Remove Windows Components in the Add Or Remove Programs dialog box.
  4. Click Application Server in the Windows Components dialog box, and then click the Details button.
  5. The Application Server dialog box appears next.
  6. Click IIS and then select the Details button.
  7. Click the NNTP Service checkbox.
  8. Click OK.
  9. Open IIS Manager.
  10. Verify that the NNTP Virtual Server node appears in the console tree of the IIS Manager.

You can use the IIS Manager to perform the NNTP management tasks listed below:

How to configure NNTP virtual servers

The NNTP service wizards which can be used to manage certain elements of NNTP virtual servers are listed below. All of these wizards can be initiated from the IIS Manager.

How to create a new NNTP virtual server on the IIS machine

  1. Open the IIS Manager
  2. Select the server's node in the console tree.
  3. Select the Action menu, click New and then select NNTP Virtual Server.
  4. The New NNTP Virtual Server Wizard starts.
  5. Enter a name for the new NNTP virtual server. This is the name that will be displayed in the IIS Manager.
  6. Enter a unique IP address and enter the TCP port for the new virtual server. The default port used for NNTP is port 119.
  7. Configure the location for the internal server files and the location for the news content files. You can specify network shares or local directories.
  8. Click Finish to create the new NNTP virtual server.

How to add a new newsgroup

  1. Open the IIS Manager
  2. In the console tree, select the Newsgroup node.
  3. Select the Action menu, click New, and then click Newsgroup.
  4. The New Newsgroup Wizard starts.
  5. Enter a name for the new newsgroup.
  6. Click Finish to create the new newsgroup.

How to create a virtual directory within the NNTP virtual server

You can create virtual directories within a NNTP virtual server to store segments of the newsgroup content within these directories

  1. Open the IIS Manager
  2. Select the Virtual Directories node under the Default NNTP Virtual Server node in the console tree.
  3. Select the Action menu, click New and then select Virtual Directory.
  4. The New NNTP Virtual Directory Wizard starts.
  5. In the Newsgroup Subtree text box, enter the newsgroup subtree that will have its content stored in the virtual directory. Click Next.
  6. Select either File System or Remote Share, and click Next.
  7. Specify the location where content will be stored. You can specify a local directory, or a network share.
  8. Click Finish to create the new virtual directory.
  9. In the console tree of the IIS Manager, click the Virtual Directories node under the Default NNTP Virtual Server node, to view the new virtual directory.

How to create an expiration policy for newsgroups

You can create an expiration policy to detail the time duration for which articles are to remain in newsgroups, prior to them being deleted.

  1. Open the IIS Manager
  2. In the console tree, select the Expiration Policies node.
  3. Select the Action menu, click New, and then click Expiration Policy.
  4. The New Expiration Policy Wizard starts.
  5. Enter a name for the new expiration policy. Click Next.
  6. In the Newsgroups list, leave the default setting if you want the new expiration policy to apply to all newsgroups hosted on the NNTP virtual server.
  7. If you want to specify the newsgroup(s) to which the new expiration policy should apply, clear the default setting in the Newsgroups list. Click Add and specify the pattern that the newsgroup(s) must match to have the expiration policy applied. Click OK. Click Next.
  8. Enter the duration, in hours, to indicate how long articles remain in the group prior to it being deleted.
  9. Click Finish to create the new expiration policy.
  10. In the console tree of IIS Manager, click the Expiration Policies node under the Default NNTP Virtual Server node to view the expiration policy.

You can configure various configuration settings for an NNTP virtual server by accessing its Properties window, and then using the various tabs to configure these settings. The tabs of the Properties window of a NNTP virtual server are:

To access the Properties window of the NNTP virtual server,

  1. Open the IIS Manager
  2. Right-click the Default NNTP Virtual Server node, and select Properties from the shortcut menu.
  3. The Properties dialog box of the NNTP Virtual Server opens.
  4. The settings that can be configured on each tab are discussed below.

General tab
The configuration settings that can be configured are:

Access tab
The security configuration settings that can be configured for NNTP on the Access tab are:

Settings tab
The settings which you can configure for message posting and newsfeeds are:

Security tab
The users and security groups that have permission to configure the properties of the NNTP server are located on the Security tab. The default groups that are assigned NNTP operator permissions are:

How to configure settings for virtual directories within the NNTP virtual server

  1. Open the IIS Manager
  2. Click the Virtual Directories node under the Default NNTP Virtual Server node, to locate the virtual directory that you want to configure settings for.
  3. Right-click the virtual directory and select Properties from the shortcut menu.
  4. The settings which you can configure on the General tab are:
    • Click the Contents button if you want to change the folder that maps to the virtual directory alias, or if you want to define the UNC path to a remote network share.
    • Click the Secure button if you want to enable or disable SSL for newsgroups of this particular virtual directory.
    • Enable the Allow Posting checkbox to allow users to post articles to newsgroups through the virtual directory.
    • Enable the Restrict Newsgroup Visibility checkbox to restrict viewing of newsgroups through the virtual directory to only users who have been authenticated by the NNTP virtual server.
    • Enable the Log Access checkbox if you want IIS logging to occur for newsgroups using the virtual directory.
    • Enable the Index News Content checkbox if you want content indexing on newsgroup content to take place.

How to test access to newsgroups using an NNTP client

  1. Open Outlook Express
  2. Select the Tools menu, and then select Accounts.
  3. When the Internet Accounts dialog box opens, Click Add, and select News.
  4. To create a new NNTP account, provide a name, e-mail address, and the fully qualified DNS name or IP address of the new server.
  5. Enable the My News Server Requires Me To Log On checkbox, and enter your user account credentials. This is only necessary if Anonymous access is not configured for the NNTP virtual server.
  6. Click Next, and then click Finish.
  7. Close the Internet Accounts dialog box
  8. Click Yes to download newsgroups
  9. When the Newsgroup Subscriptions dialog box appears, select a newsgroup from the newsgroups available on the NNTP virtual server.
  10. Click OK.
  11. You can now test access to the newsgroup by reading messages and posting messages.

How to rebuild an NNTP virtual server

You would typically need to rebuild the NNTP virtual server to recover from situations that resulted in the corruption of files on the NNTP virtual server.

To rebuild the NNTP virtual server,

  1. Open the IIS Manager
  2. Stop the NNTP virtual server which you want to rebuild. You do this by right-clicking the virtual server node and selecting Stop on the shortcut menu.
  3. Right-click the virtual server once more, and select All Tasks and then Rebuild Server from the shortcut menu.
  4. When the Rebuild NNTP Virtual Server dialog box opens, select either to perform a Standard rebuild, a Thorough rebuild.
  5. Click Start.

Managing NNTP virtual servers from the command line

The scripts included with IIS 6 which you can use to manage NNTP virtual servers are:



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