1NEWSOUTPUT(8) System Manager's Manual NEWSOUTPUT(8)
2
6 newsoutput, newsinput - notes/news gateway programs
7
9 newsoutput [ -a or -ssysname or -c filename ] [ -b ] [ -v ] [ -o date-
10 spec ] [ -f file ] topic [ ... ]
11 newsinput [ -t ] [ -1 ]
13
15 Newsoutput and newsinput manage the transfer of articles between a
16 notesfile system and a news system.
17 Newsoutput gateways notesfile-generated articles to the news system.
19 Several options determine the types of articles to be transfered. The
20 -a option specifies that any notesfile-generated article that has not
21 been in the news system before is to be sent to news. The -ssysname
22 option specifies that only articles from sysname are to be sent to the
23 news system. The -c option directs newsoutput to gateway articles
24 written at any of the systems whose names appear in the file filename.
25 If none of these options is specified, only locally generated articles
26 are sent to the news. In normal operation, the -a or -c options are
27 most typically used; -s is included for backwards compatibility.
28 The -b option specifies that newsoutput should generate articles which
30 will be parsed correctly by previous versions of the notesfile/news
31 gateway code. Files containing lists of notesfiles can be specified
32 through the -f option. Use -v for a more verbose output than normal;
33 default operation produces a summary of notes and responses transmitted
34 for each notesfile with traffic.
35 The -o option specifies that only articles that arrived on the local
37 system after date-spec are to be considered for transmittal to news.
38 The timestamp file is updated after the execution of newsoutput whether
39 the -o option is specified.
40 The actual method of insertion into the news system is determined in
42 the ``net.how'' file by the transmission method for the pseudo-site
43 ``Usenet''. Mappings between notesfiles and newsgroups are specified
44 in the file ``/usr/spool/notes/.utilities/newsgroups''.
45 The newsinput program accepts articles from the news system, parses
47 headers, maps newsgroups to appropriate notesfiles, and inserts the
48 articles. News' control messages are intercepted and placed in a main‐
49 tainence notesfile for review by the system manager. When a news arti‐
50 cle maps to a non-existent notesfile, the notesfile is automatically
51 created.
52 The -t directs newsinput to NOT log cases where the Message-Id is
54 longer than the reserved space in the note descriptor. These
55 occurences are normally logged in the nfmaint notesfile. The -1 option
56 directs newsinput to place the article in the first notesfile on the
57 Newsgroups line. The normal action is to place a copy of the article
58 in each notesfile specified on the Newsgroups line.
59 Typically newsoutput is run by cron(8) at intervals ranging from hourly
61 to daily. Newsinput is invoked automatically by the news system when
62 it propogates articles. See appendix B of The Notesfile Reference Man‐
63 ual for a more detailed discussion on configuring and installing a
64 notesfile-news gateway.
65 The notesfile-news mapping function used the file
67 /usr/spool/notes/.utilities to map names between the two systems. The
68 mapping functions allow simple one-for-one name mapping, one-to-many
69 mapping, and mapping ``basenotes'' and responses from one notesfile to
70 separate newsgroups. See appendix B of The Notesfile Reference Manual
71 for more information on how this works.
72
74 News articles which can definitely be marked as responses because they
75 have a ``References'' line but whose parents can't be found by article-
76 ID or by guessing from the title are not counted as orphans. This is
77 due to problems arising from mapping of article-ID's to allow a notes‐
78 file and news system to coexist on the same host.
79 newsinput doesn't correctly do one-to-many mapping of newsgroups to
81 notesfiles. Newsoutput does do one-to-many mapping of notesfiles to
82 newsgroups.
83 Since the author's system may not have seen the article yet (if he
85 wrote it via nfmail for example), the ``Path:'' header line may not
86 point anywhere near the author.
87 The ``Path'' line generated contains full-domain information and
89 doesn't necessarily point at the author. News systems 2.10.2 and ear‐
90 lier still assume that the last component of this header line is an
91 author name and treat it specially.
92 The Message-Id field is set at 32 bytes in Notes 1.7. This should be
94 made longer. 64 bytes is probably adequate.
95 Because colons are used as delimiters in the notesfile transfer format,
97 Message-Id's with colons are declared "UnManageable" and ignored.
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100 /usr/spool/notes/.utilities where these programs live.
101 /usr/spool/notes/.utilities/newsgroups mapping between notesfiles and
102 newsgroups
103 /usr/spool/notes/.utilities/net.how Pseudo-site ``Usenet'' speci‐
104 fies how to insert news arti‐
105 cles.
106
108 news(1), notes(1), nfxmit(8), uucp(1),
109 The Notesfile Reference Manual
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112 Ray Essick (uiucdcs!essick, essick%uiuc@csnet-relay.arpa)
113 Department of Computer Science
114 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
115 Urbana, IL
116 Rob Kolstad (kolstad@convex.UUCP)
118 CONVEX Computer Corporation
119 Richardson, TX
120 University of Illinois NEWSOUTPUT(8)