nntpd may be configured as either a standalone server that is started at system boot time from rc.inet2, or a daemon managed by inetd. In the latter case you have to have the following entry in /etc/inetd.conf:
nntp stream tcp nowait news /usr/etc/in.nntpd nntpd
If you configure nntpd as standalone, make sure that any such
line in inetd.conf is commented out. In either case, you have to
make sure there's the following line in /etc/services:
nntp 119/tcp readnews untp # Network News Transfer Protocol
To temporarily store any incoming articles, etc, nntpd also needs
a .tmp directory in your news spool. You should create it using
# mkdir /var/spool/news/.tmp
# chown news.news /var/spool/news/.tmp