Want to get s/w on Linux that does the following: automatically talks to an 
NNTP server, gets newsgroups/msgs and makes them available on a web server.

You might want to look at Papercut, a free NNTP server written in Python.  
According to the web page, Papercut's "main objective is to integrate existing 
web based message board software (Phorum on this case) with an Usenet front-
end".  This may not be exactly what you were looking for, but it might fill 
your needs.  You can read about Papercut and download it here:

http://papercut.org/index.php

Also, perl.org has a web interface for their news server.  They make some of 
the software available, but their web page doesn't give a very detailed 
drescription of how the software works.  This is the page that gives some 
information about their web news interface:

http://nntp.perl.org/about/

In addition, you may want to look at the newsreaders.com resource of Unix-based 
newsreader clients at http://www.newsreaders.com/unix/clients.html

Another product that may suit your needs is WebNews 
(http://netwinsite.com/webnews/)
"WebNews is a server side application (cgi) which provides your users with web 
based access to Internet News Groups. It is compatible with any standard NNTP 
News server system."
It is free for one month to evaluate, but then has a license fee. View their 
web site for pricing details.

If you are willing to code a little and dont mind touching Apache's httpd.conf 
then you may want to consider Apache's NNTPGateway directive. Details are 
available here, http://search.cpan.org/doc/BOUBAKER/Apache-NNTPGateway-
0.8/NNTPGateway.pm

Perhaps your best bet is to use Hypernews in conjunction with a unix newsreader 
from the list at newsreaders.com. This software converst a newsgroup file into 
HTML and can be run as a cronjob. Software is available at 
http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Networking/News/hypernews-1.0/

There are also several products that will directly connect to a NNTP server 
from a web browser. Examples of this include W3News 
(http://www.nikhef.nl/user/t16/public/w3news.html) and Direct Read News 
(http://newsadmin.com/drn/drnoverview.htm).

This information is taken from http://www.newsreaders.com/web/software.html

I hope one of these will help you do what you're trying to do.

Excellent, I'm sure one of those software packages will fit my needs