1fetchnews(8) System Manager's Manual fetchnews(8)
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6 fetchnews - fetch news via NNTP
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10 fetchnews [-q] [-v] ... [-x number] [-l] [-n] [-f] [-P] [-w]
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14 Leafnode is a USENET package intended for small sites, where there are
15 few users and little disk space, but where a large number of groups is
16 desired.
17 The design of leafnode is intended to self-repair after problems, and
19 to require no manual maintenance.
20 Fetchnews (formerly called "fetch") is the program which submits and
22 retrieves new articles to or from the upstream NNTP server.
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26 -q Be quiet. Suppresses some warnings. This flag cancels any previ‐
27 ously encountered -v flags.
28 -v Be verbose. This flag cancels any previously encountered -q
30 flags. A maximum of four -v can be used (the more v, the more
31 verbose):
32 -v Warn about non-critical errors.
34 -vv Be verbose whenever a group command occurs.
36 -vvv Be verbose whenever an article command occurs.
38 -vvvv For debugging purposes. Don't expect the additional output to
40 make sense.
41 -w Wait mode. This causes the XOVER update (which runs after the
43 article fetch phase) to run in the foreground. By default, the
44 XOVER update runs in the background, detached from the shell, on
45 systems that offer a working fork(2) call. Helpful for debugging
46 and to avoid terminal clobbering when fetchnews is run manually.
47 -x number
49 Go number articles back and try to re-fetch what's missing. This
50 can be useful to pull data from broken servers that have either
51 overview and group data out of synch or create articles out of
52 article number order.
53 -l Don't use supplementary servers (-l is supposed to mean
55 "local"). This does speed up the operation quite a bit.
56 -n Do not expire newsgroup subscriptions. Technically: do not
58 unlink files in the interesting.groups directory.
59 -f Erase the active.read file, thus force redownloading the whole
61 active file from all upstream servers. This is usually occurring
62 only very infrequently because it takes a long time. See time‐
63 out_active in leafnode(8). DO NOT use this option in cron jobs
64 or otherwise regularly.
65 -P Only post articles that have accumulated in the out.going direc‐
67 tory but do not fetch articles from upstream servers.
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71 fetchnews will exit with code 0 if it could connect to all servers and
72 encountered no other errors. It exits with code 2 when it was unable to
73 connect to at least one server, and it exits with code 1 on other
74 errors.
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78 /var/spool/news/leaf.node/active.read
79 is a file to track when the active files have been successfully
80 downloaded from the upstream servers the last time. If it is
81 missing, this has the same effect as giving the -f option. It is
82 only created after the active file of each upstream servers has
83 been downloaded successfully.
84 See leafnode(8) for the list of other files affected, and for informa‐
86 tion on configuring fetchnews.
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90 LN_SKIP_GROUPS=pattern[,pattern[...]] (since v1.9.53)
91 If set, all groups that match one of the wildmat(3) patterns
92 will be skipped during the fetch. This can be used as a quick
93 way of skipping binary groups during daytime, for instance,
94 example:
95 env 'LN_SKIP_GROUPS=*binary*,alt.*' /usr/sbin/fetchnews -nq
97 LN_LOCK_TIMEOUT
100 This variable is parsed as an unsigned integer value and deter‐
101 mines how many seconds fetchnews will wait when trying to obtain
102 the lock file from another leafnode program. 0 means to wait
103 indefinitely. This variable takes precedence over the configura‐
104 tion file.
105 LN_SUPPRESS_DATE
108 (since v1.11.7) If this variable is defined (regardless of its
109 value, including empty), leafnode will skip checking the
110 upstream server's time by means of the NNTP DATE command.
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114 Here is a brief description of what fetchnews does.
115 First, after connecting to the upstream NNTP server, all articles that
117 have the u+r permission (0400) flag set in /var/spool/news/out.going
118 are posted using POST. If a posting fails, that article is moved to
119 /var/spool/news/failed.postings which an administrator has to clean up
120 once in a while. Moving a file back to /var/spool/news/out.going is
121 sufficient to retry the post it. The u+r flag is checked to prevent
122 posting an (incomplete) article that leafnode(8) is still receiving at
123 the same time. If a posting succeeds, the article is removed from
124 out.going in order to not post it twice into a moderated newsgroup on a
125 different server (which would send multiple copies of the article to
126 the moderator). Note: older fetchnews versions tried to post on all
127 servers first, but failed to do so when one of the servers could not be
128 reached. If you need to work around a dodgy upstream server that is
129 fast but doesn't forward your posts reliably, prohibit posting to this
130 server using the nopost server option in the configuration file, see
131 leafnode(8).
132 Second, the upstream server's list of newsgroups (obtained using LIST
134 and LIST NEWSGROUPS) is merged into leafnode's (if timeout_active has
135 expired, the active.read file is not present or the active file is
136 empty) or updated (with NEWGROUPS).
137 Third, fetchnews iterates over the list of newsgroups, performing a
139 GROUP, an XOVER (if supported) or XHDR Message-ID and a number of HEAD
140 and BODY or ARTICLE commands for each group which has been read
141 recently. It assumes that for the particular group it is looking at,
142 "maxage" was set to the groupexpire or global expire. As a consequence,
143 it makes only sense to set maxage lower than or equal to expire.
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147 Fetchnews does not use NEWNEWS. NEWNEWS is not used because it is
148 often very expensive and therefore also disabled at many sites.
149 After some experiments, I decided that it was better to fetch all the
151 articles in a group than to optimize away some; users would complain
152 too loudly when the optmizer guessed wrongly.
153 The only way to control what newsgroups are accessible to local users
155 is to control what the upstream server lets fetchnews read, and that
156 will not keep out all crossposts (endemic in e.g. the alt.sex groups).
157 If your site is big enough that you need to control newsgroup access,
158 consider using a news server which is designed for a big site.
159 Fetchnews sets its real and effective uid to "news" when started as
161 root and refuses to run if it cannot get this user ID.
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165 Fetchnews ignores the "Supersedes:" and "Control:" headers.
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169 Older versions of fetchnews posted any articles found in out.going.
170 Since v1.9.23, fetchnews will only post article files that have their
171 user executable bit set. Leafnode sets this bit after it has success‐
172 fully received a post. This behaviour avoids posting incomplete arti‐
173 cles when leafnode receives a post at the same time fetchnews is post‐
174 ing.
175
178 Written by Arnt Gulbrandsen <agulbra@troll.no> and copyright 1995-96
179 Troll Tech AS, Postboks 6133 Etterstad, 0602 Oslo, Norway, fax +47
180 22646949.
181 Modified by Cornelius Krasel <krasel@wpxx02.toxi.uni-wuerzburg.de>,
183 Markus Enzenberger <enz@cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de> and Randolf Skerka
184 <Randolf.Skerka@gmx.de>. Copyright of the modifications 1997-1999.
185 Modified by Matthias Andree <matthias.andree@gmx.de>, copyright of the
186 modifications 2001-2004.
187
190 leafnode(8), texpire(8), newsq(1), /etc/leafnode/leafnode/filters.exam‐
191 ple.
192leafnode 1.11.7 fetchnews(8)