Reading and Posting News from Off-Campus

Using newsgroups effectively is much easier with a modern news client such as Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook. The problem is that UW blocks you from posting to the newsgroup unless you've been authenticated. We don't want to wade through spam postings! That means that you can't post from off-campus -- unless you know about SSH Tunnelling.

So, to use a newsgroup fully from off campus, you need:

1. A small, free, application named PuTTY.
2. A newsreader such as Thunderbird (also free; it also reads e-mail). Microsoft Outlook can be set up similarly, although instructions are not (yet) provided here.
3. A little bit of set-up on your computer.

Configuring PuTTY

1. Download PuTTY. Click on putty.exe to download the application itself. Save it someplace with other programs (remember where!).
2. Launch PuTTY (double-click on it). You'll see a dialog box, as shown on the right.
3. Click on the word Tunnels in the left pane. Fill it in as shown.
4. Click the Add button.
5. Now click the word Session in the left pane. You'll return to the first screen you saw after opening PuTTY.
6. Fill in an appropriate front-end or round-robin server that you have access to.
   • CS students should use linux.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca, which will automatically connect you to one of the linux hosts in the CS Student Computing Environment in a fashion that balances load.
   • Math students should use one of front-ends in the Math Student Computing Environment.
7. Press the Save button to save your settings for the next time you use PuTTY.
8. Exit out of PuTTY.
9. Launch PuTTY again. Hopefully, the first screen you see looks like the one shown on the right.
10. Double-click on Off-Campus News. You'll get a security warning; click Yes.
11. A terminal window will appear. Enter your Unix username and password. It should then look similar to the following. Of course, your user id will not be bwbecker! Leave PuTTY running while you proceed to set up Thunderbird.

That's it for configuring PuTTY. Now you need to configure a newsreader such as Thunderbird.

Configuring Thunderbird

1. Download Thunderbird from Thunderbird and install it on your computer. It has a nice installer to make it easier.
2. Launch Thunderbird. It will ask you to create a new account. Select a Newsgroup account.
3. Click Next button. Enter your name and email address.
4. Click Next. Enter the news server localhost. This is the keyword that directs it to communicate through PuTTY to the University's servers.
5. Click Next. Name this account, perhaps Off-Campus News.
6. Click Next. You'll see a confirmation screen.
7. Click Finish. A new entry will be added to Thunderbird's left pane.
8. Left-click on Off-Campus News and choose Properties. Choose the Server Settings tab and change the default value of 119 to 1190.
9. Click OK.Back at the Thunderbird window, left-click on Off-Campus News again. Choose Subscribe.... You'll see a dialog box like the following:
10. Type cs134 into the box. Select uw.cs.cs134.
11. Click on the OK button.You'll return to the main Thunderbird screen.
    Select uw.cs.cs134 and you'll see a list of newsgroup articles in the right pane:
12. Click one of the subject lines to read that message. Explore the Message menu to see how to reply to just the person who posted or to the entire newsgroup.

Reading News the Next Time

Thankfully, most of these steps are only necessary once. The next time you want to read news, do the following:

1. Launch PuTTY.
2. Double-click the Off-Campus News setting.
3. Launch Thunderbird.
4. Read news!