The Prairienet Community Network is an outreach service of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at UIUC. Prairienet hosts the local cmi.* newsgroups which serve Champaign-Urbana and surroundings. Our thanks to the University of Oregon for providing a free newsfeed for news.prairienet.org.

cmi.* newsgroups are also carried on UIUC news server http://news.ks.uiuc.edu/ and are accessible in various way by UIUC members.   See site for details and setup instructions.

Configuring your news client -- please see your news client's help files for information on how to set up to access a news server. Examples of Windows news clients: Outlook Express, Internet Explorer, Netscape, XNews, etc. UNIX programs: tin, nn, PINE.

Instructions for configuring news clients:

• Netscape 4.7x
• Outlook Express
• PINE
• nn
• tin

We will list setup instructions for other news clients as they are submitted by volunteers. E-mail newsgroups@prairienet.org to help out.

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cmi.* newsgroups -- Prairienet host the cmi.* newsgroups, a collection of newsgroups of local interest to Champaign-Urbana and surroundings. Distribution of cmi.* newsgroups is limited to East Central Illinois. The name cmi comes from CMI (ChaMpaIgn), the designation for Willard Airport. Back to top.

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ISP's news server
The following local ISPs carry cmi.*

• Advancenet: news.advancenet.net
• Carle: news.carle.com
• PDNT: sol.pdnt.net
• Shouting Ground: news.shout.net
• Sol Tec: news2.soltec.net
• Wolfram: news.wolfram.com

Back to top.

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all newsgroups -- Prairienet carries approximately 30,000+ USENET newsgroups. Back to top.

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Authentication -- Internet Service Providers (ISPs) generally limit access to their news server to users from their own domain. This means that you need to be using that ISP's Internet access (dialup, cable, DSL, etc.) in order to have access to the news server. In order to accommodate users who may wish to access the news server while using another ISP's Internet access, some ISPs offer authentication. This means that everytime before you can access newsgroups, you will need to log in with your username and password. please see your news client's help files for information on how to configure it to log in the news server. Back to top.

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SSH -- Unlike telnet, SSH (Secure SHell) provides encryption of communication between client and host computers, protecting logins and password. Free Windows and Macintosh SSH clients are available for download from Prairienet's FTP site. Please see Downloading and Installing SSH for details. Back to top.

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Prairienet Membership -- Various types of memberships are available. For users who have Internet access through UIUC or other ISPs, a Limited Membership ($35/year) is the best choice. Visit the Member Center for more information. Back to top.

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Outlook Express

Prairienet members

• In the OE menu, select Tools/Accounts
• On the following screen select the News tab and click Add and then News. Fill in the following screens with common sense.
• When you reach the Internet News Server Name page, enter news.prairienet.org in the name field and check the box that says My news server requires me to log on and click Next.
• Enter your Prairienet username and password on the following page. Be sure that the Remember my password box IS checked, and the Secure Password Authentication (SPA) box is NOT checked.

UIUC users

• In the OE menu, select Tools/Accounts
• On the following screen select the News tab and click Add and then News. Fill in the following screens with common sense.
• When you reach the Internet News Server Name page, enter news.prairienet.org in the name field and UNcheck the box that says My news server requires me to log on and click Next.

Contributed by Stuart Laird

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PINE

For uiuc.edu users (PINE is already properly configured for Prairienet users)

• From the entry page, type "M" to go to the MAIN MENU.
• From there, select "S" for SETUP.
• From there, select "C" for Config.
• Use your down arrow to scroll down three or four to "nntp-server".
• Press "enter" to begin entering information, and then type out the new server address - "news.prairienet.org".
• Press "enter" to accept that information.
• Now select "E" to Exit Setup, followed by a "Y" to accept changes.

And that should do it.

• Head back to the Main Menu with an "M", give a "L" for the Folder List, and scroll down one to News on news.prairient.org/nntp.
• Press "enter" and you should see the groups list.
• From there, add, delete, subscribe, etc. as instructed at the bottom of the screen.

Contributed by Darren King.

Possible PINE problem: newsgroups come up empty

If you have previously used PINE to read cmi.* newsgroups on news.uiuc.edu, you may experience a problem with certain newsgroups coming up empty. This is due to a problem in your .newsrc which will contain now old article numbers that don't correspond to the numbering of articles on news.prairienet.org. The solution is edit your .newsrc file manually and delete all the numbers following the colon after the newsgroup name (be sure to leave the colon in place).

Contributed by Milt Epstein.

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Netscape 4.7x

Note that this is for Netscape 4.7X, and probably would have to be adapted for newer versions (Mozilla should be similar as well).

1. Set up the Prairienet news server (news.prairienet.org) as one of
   your news servers:
   A. Under the "Edit" menu, choose "Preferences..."
   B. If there's a "+" next to "Mail & Newsgroups", click on it to
      expand that category
   C. Click on "Newsgroup Servers"
   D. Click on "Add"
   E. In the "Server:" box, enter "news.prairienet.org" (without the
      quotes)
   F. Click on "OK"
   G. (Optional) Set this as your default news server by clicking on
      it in the list of servers and then clicking on "Set as Default"
   H. Click on "OK"

2. Subscribe to newsgroups on this news server:
   A. Under the "Communicator" menu, choose "Newsgroups"
   B. Click on the server name
   C. Under the "File" menu, choose "Subscribe..."
   D. Click on a "+" (or click on "Expand") to expand a newsgroup
      hierarchy listing
   E. Subscribe to a newsgroup by clicking on it and then clicking on
      "Subscribe" (or by double clicking on it)
   F. You can subscribe to as many newsgroups as you want
   G. When done, click on "OK"

3. Now you should be able to read news the way you did previously
   (that is, simply click on the newsgroup name; you may need to
   expand the list of newsgroups under the server first)

Contributed by Milt Epstein.

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nn

For uiuc.edu users:

Just add the following line to your .login:
setenv NNTPSERVER news.prairienet.org
and go about browsing like you used to do.

Contributed by Darren King.

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tin (UIUC users only)

1) Go to your .tin folder
        $cd ~/.tin
2) Open up the newsrctable file in your favorite editor
        $vim newsrctable
3) Add the following and edit to your convenience:
        #newsserver          news-file    news-nick
        news.prairienet.org .newsrc-prnet prnet
4) To read news:
        $tin -g prnet
5) You might have to source your shellrc file for the variables to load (or
   kill your shell and open it again).
        $source .bashrc (or .cshrc or whatever)
6) You could make life easier if you have an alias created so you dont have
   to use the -g option everytime.
        $alias tinpr='tin -g prnet'
7) To make the change permanent  add the line in your .zshrc (or whatever
   shell you use)
8) To read news from prairienet:
        $tinpr
9) The first time you run tin will prompt you to create a the .newsrc-prnet
   file (or whatever you name it). Choose c to create

As before you may have to source your shellrc file to load the env
variables. Note that the dollar sign '$' is whenever the command is
issued at the command prompt. You can set up tin to read from multiple
newsservers by repeating these steps. 
Namely 
        a) add the newsserver to your newsrctablefile 
        b) use tin -g news-nick.

Contributed by George Abraham

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Last updated February 17, 2005 by newsgroups@prairienet.org.

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