newbie mailpost woes

Hello list:

In short, I have not be able to get it
to post.

system:
sendmail 8.11.6
inn 2.3.4 running on linux

The system is pretty much a poc I'm
trying to set up to allow my local
network users to share ideas, concepts,
and archive project emails. No external
newsfeed.

I can read/post from the internal network
just fine, and from the external network
with authentication, just fine.

I've set up a dozen test groups to test
crossposting and show the poc with
the mozilla MailNews client. All works
well. Challenge they through at me
requires the ability to post via
email.

after reading all I could find, and
fixing the smrsh issue, sendmail now
seems happy enough,

log entry

May 22 15:54:40 mailhost sendmail[29913]: h4MJsel29912:
to="|/usr/local/news/bin/mailpost news.domain project.test",
ctladdr=<newstest@mailhost> (8/0), delay=00:00:00,
xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=prog, pri=30365, dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent

But inn never picks it up. It just seems
to silently drop the attempted post.
I can't find a log to track it from.
news.notice doesn't show a connection, nothing.

Can anyone offer a clue?
/usr/bin/inews is world exectable
(although I don't know where it fits
in the chain) and ~news/tmp is writable
by news

Thanks in advance

chipper