How to Setup Stunnel for Usenet

By Cèbe, . Permalink Ubuntu

I recently installed Pan, a newsreader for Linux that's quite good and stable, but a bit old. As a consequence, it doesn't handle SSL.

Fortunately, it is possible to use a third party tool, stunnel, to do the hard work instead.

First:

sudo apt-get install pan stunnel4

To install both applications.

Next:

  • edit /etc/default/stunnel4 and change ENABLED=0 to ENABLED=1
  • edit /etc/stunnel/stunnel.conf, uncomment client = yes and add a nntp section like
   ; Use it for client mode
   client = yes
    
   [nntp]
   accept = 127.0.0.1:119
   connect = newsgroupServerName:563
  • Start stunnel (it should automatically start at startup)
   sudo /etc/init.d/stunnel start

Last but not least, in Pan you must setup the newsserver as being localhost, port 119. You're done!

If something goes wrong, some hints:

  • netstat -l | grep nntp to check nntp service is running
  • Check stunnel4 logs (logs can be enabled in /etc/stunnel/stunnel.conf)
  • Check Pan events log
  • you do not need to create any certificate/key (.pem) of any kind, like it is written on some forums. We're using stunnel in client mode only!

source 1 source 2

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