1RAWDOG(1) General Commands Manual RAWDOG(1)
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6 rawdog - an RSS Aggregator Without Delusions Of Grandeur
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9 rawdog [options]
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12 rawdog is a feed aggregator for Unix-like systems.
13 rawdog uses the Python feedparser module to retrieve articles from a
15 number of feeds in RSS, Atom and other formats, and writes out a single
16 HTML file, based on a template either provided by the user or generated
17 by rawdog, containing the latest articles it's seen.
18 rawdog uses the ETags and Last-Modified headers to avoid fetching a
20 file that hasn't changed, and supports gzip and delta compression to
21 reduce bandwidth when it has. rawdog is configured from a simple text
22 file; the only state kept between invocations that can't be recon‐
23 structed from the feeds is the ordering of articles.
24
26 This program follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long
27 options starting with two dashes (`-').
28 General Options
30 -d DIR, --dir DIR
31 Use DIR instead of the $HOME/.rawdog directory. This option
32 lets you have two or more rawdog setups with different configu‐
33 rations and sets of feeds.
34 -N, --no-locking
36 Do not lock the state file.
37 rawdog usually claims a lock on its state file, to stop more
39 than one instance from running at the same time. Unfortunately,
40 some filesystems don't support file locking; you can use this
41 option to disable locking entirely if you're in that situation.
42 -v, --verbose
44 Print more detailed information about what rawdog is doing to
45 stderr while it runs.
46 -V FILE, --log FILE
48 As with -V, but write the information to FILE.
49 -W, --no-lock-wait
51 Exit silently if the state file is already locked.
52 If the state file is already locked, rawdog will normally wait
54 until it becomes available, then run. However, if you're got a
55 lot of feeds and a slow network connection, you might prefer
56 rawdog to just give up immediately if the previous instance is
57 still running.
58 Actions
60 rawdog will perform these actions in the order given.
61 -a URL, --add URL
63 Try to find a feed associated with URL and add it to the config
64 file.
65 URL may be a feed itself, or it can be an HTML page that links
67 to a feed in any of a variety of ways. rawdog uses heuristics
68 to pick the best feed it can find, and will complain if it can't
69 find one.
70 -c FILE, --config FILE
72 Read FILE as an additional config file; any options provided in
73 FILE will override those set in the main config file (with the
74 exception of "feed", which is cumulative). FILE may be an abso‐
75 lute path or a path relative to your .rawdog directory.
76 Note that $HOME/.rawdog/config will still be read first even if
78 you specify this option. -c is mostly useful when you want to
79 write the same set of feeds out using two different sets of out‐
80 put options.
81 -f URL, --update-feed URL
83 Update the feed pointed to by URL immediately, even if its
84 period hasn't elapsed since it was last updated. This is useful
85 when you're publishing a feed yourself, and want to test whether
86 it's working properly.
87 -l, --list
89 List brief information about each of the feeds that was known
90 about at the time of the last update.
91 -r URL, --remove URL
93 Remove feed URL from the config file.
94 -s TEMPLATE, --show TEMPLATE
96 Print one of the templates currently in use to stdout. TEMPLATE
97 may be page, item, feedlist or feeditem. This can be used as a
98 starting point if you want to design your own template for use
99 with the corresponding template option in the config file.
100 -u, --update
102 Fetch data from the feeds and store it. This could take some
103 time if you've got lots of feeds.
104 -w, --write
106 Write out the HTML output file.
107 Special Actions
109 If one of these options is specified, rawdog will perform only that
110 action, then exit.
111 --dump URL
113 Show what rawdog's feed parser returns for URL. This can be
114 useful when trying to understand why rawdog doesn't display a
115 feed correctly.
116 --help Provide a brief summary of all the options rawdog supports.
118
120 rawdog is typically invoked from cron(1). The following crontab(5)
121 entry would fetch data from feeds and write it to HTML once an hour,
122 exiting if rawdog is already running:
123 0 * * * * rawdog -Wuw
125
127 $HOME/.rawdog/config
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130 cron(1).
131
133 rawdog was mostly written by Adam Sampson <ats@offog.org>, with contri‐
134 butions and bug reports from many of rawdog's users. See rawdog's NEWS
135 file for a complete list of contributors.
136 This manual page was originally written by Decklin Foster <deck‐
138 lin@red-bean.com>, for the Debian project (but may be used by others).
139 RAWDOG(1)