Here is a decent game-plan for testing your newsfeeds configuration:

Suppose your site is in New Jersey and you have a distribution called
"mentorg" which should be used by people that want to make sure that
their post will not leave their company (Mentor Graphics).  You should
do a test post to "nj.test" with no "Distribution:" header, and with
"Distribution: nj" and "Distribution: mentorg".  After posting, do a
"ctlinnd flush ''" and make sure that the /var/spool/news/out.going
files for all your sites did/didn't queue up those three messages as
appropriate.

IMPORTANT:  Remember to do a "ctlinnd reload newsfeeds x" command every
time you update your "newsfeeds" file!

Finally, for checking out changes to newsfeeds, I've found "ctlinnd
checkfile" handy.   "inncheck" will verify that most of your
configuration is sane.

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