That homedir for the news user I think was setup to match up with the inn package long ago. 
(Ie, if you have both leafnode and inn installed the news user should work ok for inn as well). 

If you change the news user's homedir to say '/tmp' does that cause it to work?

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This has not been fixed yet, /usr/sbin/fetchnews is still run as root. Moreover, the package adds a cron tidbit to /etc/cron.d ... wouldn't it better to add this shell script to /etc/cron.hourly/ ?


#!/bin/sh
sudo -u news /usr/sbin/fetchnews

(In reply to comment #3)
> #!/bin/sh
> sudo -u news /usr/sbin/fetchnews

Actually the working script is

#!/bin/sh

su news -s /bin/sh -c /usr/sbin/fetchnews

Maybe just changing the cron tidbit to

01 * * * * news /usr/sbin/fetchnews

would be an alternative.

I actually don't use leafnode here anymore... would you like to take over maintaining it? :) 

Or at least would you care to just apply your changes? 

If not, I'll try and get to it...

(In reply to comment #5)
> Or at least would you care to just apply your changes? 

I am a provenpackager, so I suppose I could just play with leafnode packaging a little bit.

leafnode-1.11.8-9.fc17 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 17.
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/leafnode-1.11.8-9.fc17

leafnode-1.11.8-9.fc18 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 18.
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/leafnode-1.11.8-9.fc18

Package leafnode-1.11.8-9.fc18:
* should fix your issue,
* was pushed to the Fedora 18 testing repository,
* should be available at your local mirror within two days.
Update it with:
# su -c 'yum update --enablerepo=updates-testing leafnode-1.11.8-9.fc18'
as soon as you are able to.
Please go to the following url:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2012-19136/leafnode-1.11.8-9.fc18
then log in and leave karma (feedback).

leafnode-1.11.8-9.fc17 has been pushed to the Fedora 17 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.

leafnode-1.11.8-9.fc18 has been pushed to the Fedora 18 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.