Question 3.3

My news server requires authentication, how to store user name and password on disk?

Answer

Create a file ~/.authinfo which includes for each server a line like this

machine news.yourprovider.net login YourUserName password YourPassword

. Make sure that the file isn’t readable to others if you work on an OS which is capable of doing so. (Under Unix say

chmod 600 ~/.authinfo

in a shell.)