1NEWSFEEDS(5) InterNetNews Documentation NEWSFEEDS(5)
2
6 newsfeeds - Determine where Usenet articles are sent
7
9 The file pathetc/newsfeeds specifies how incoming articles should be
10 distributed to other programs and files on the server. It is parsed by
11 the InterNetNews server innd(8) when it starts up, or when directed to
12 by ctlinnd(8). innd doesn't send articles to remote sites itself, so
13 newsfeeds doesn't directly determine which remote news servers articles
14 are sent to. Instead, it specifies what batch files should be created
15 or which programs should be run (and what information should be sent to
16 them), and then this information is used by programs like innxmit(8)
17 and innfeed(8) to feed articles to remote sites.
18 The newsfeeds file isn't used solely to set up feeding accepted
20 articles to remote sites but also to pass them (or bits of information
21 about them) to any local programs or files that want that data. For
22 example, controlchan(8), a daemon that processes incoming control
23 messages, runs out of newsfeeds, as could a news to mail gateway.
24 The file is interpreted as a set of lines, parsed according to the
26 following rules: If a line ends with a backslash, the backslash, the
27 newline, and any whitespace at the start of the next line is deleted.
28 This is repeated until the entire "logical" line is collected. If the
29 logical line is blank or starts with a number sign ("#"), it is
30 ignored.
31 All other lines are interpreted as feed entries. An entry should
33 consist of four colon-separated fields; two of the fields may have
34 optional sub-fields, marked off by a slash. Fields or sub-fields that
35 take multiple parameters should be separated by a comma. Extra
36 whitespace can cause problems and should be avoided. Except for the
37 site names, case is significant. The format of an entry is:
38 sitename[/exclude,exclude,...]\
40 :pattern,pattern...[/distribution,distribution...]\
41 :flag,flag...\
42 :parameter
43 Each field is described below.
45 The sitename is the name of the site to which a news article can be
47 sent. It is used for writing log entries and for determining if an
48 article should be forwarded to a site. (A "site" is the generic term
49 for some destination of newsfeed data; it often corresponds to a remote
50 news peer, but doesn't have to. For example, a local archiving program
51 run from newsfeeds is also a "site".) If sitename already appears in
52 the article's Path: header, then the article will not be sent to the
53 site. The name is usually whatever the remote site uses to identify
54 itself in the Path: header, but can be almost any word.
55 Be careful, though, to avoid having the sitename accidentally match a
57 Path: header entry unintentionally. For this reason, special local
58 entries (such as archivers or gateways) should probably end with an
59 exclamation point to make sure that they do not have the same name as
60 any real site. For example, "gateway" is an obvious name for the local
61 entry that forwards articles out to a mailing list. If a site with the
62 name "gateway" posts an article, when the local site receives the
63 article it will see the name in the Path and not send the article to
64 its own "gateway" entry. Since "gateway!" can't appear as an
65 individual Path: entry since "!" is a delimiter in the Path: header,
66 that would be a better thing to use for sitename.
67 (Another way to avoid this problem is with the "Ap" flag; see the
69 description below.)
70 If an entry has an exclusion sub-field, the article will not be sent to
72 that site if any of exclude appear in the Path: header. (It's
73 sometimes convenient to have the sitename be an abbreviated form of the
74 name of the remote site, since all the sitenames to which an article is
75 sent are written to the log and using shorter sitenames can therefore
76 improve performance for large servers. In this case, the Path: header
77 entries of those sites should be given as exclude entries and the "Ap"
78 flag used so that the abbreviated sitename doesn't accidentally match
79 some other Path: header entry.)
80 The same sitename can be used more than once and the appropriate action
82 will be taken for each entry that should receive the article, but this
83 is recommended only for program feeds to avoid confusion. Case is not
84 significant in site names.
85 The comma-separated pattern specifies which groups to send to the site;
87 it is interpreted to build a "subscription list" for the site. The
88 default subscription is to get all groups carried by the server. It is
89 a uwildmat(3) pattern supporting poison ("@") wildcards; see the
90 uwildmat(3) man page for full details on the pattern matching language.
91 pattern will be matched against every newsgroup carried by the server
92 and all newsgroups that match will be added to the subscription list
93 for the site.
94 Normally, a given article (or information about it) is sent to a site
96 if any of the newsgroups to which the article was posted are in that
97 site's subscription list. If a newsgroup matches a "@" pattern in
98 pattern, then not only is it not added to the subscription list, but
99 any articles crossposted to that newsgroup also will not be sent to
100 that site even if other newsgroups to which it was crossposted are in
101 that site's subscription list. This is called a poison pattern
102 (because matching groups are "poisoned").
103 For example, to receive all comp.* groups, but only comp.sources.unix
105 within the sources newsgroups, the following pattern can be used:
106 comp.*,!comp.sources.*,comp.sources.unix
108 Note that the trailing ".*" is required; the pattern has to match the
110 whole newsgroup name. "comp.sources.*" could be written
111 "comp.sources*" and would exclude the newsgroup comp.sources (if it
112 exists) as well as the groups in the comp.sources.* hierarchy, but note
113 that this would also exclude a newsgroup named comp.sources-only
114 (whereas the above pattern would add that group to the site
115 subscription list since it matches "comp.*" and none of the other
116 patterns).
117 For another example, to feed alt.* and misc.* to a given site but not
119 any articles posted to alt.binaries.warez (even if they're also
120 crossposted to other alt.* or misc.* groups), the following pattern can
121 be used:
122 alt.*,@alt.binaries.warez,misc.*
124 Note, however, that if you reversed the "alt.*" and
126 "@alt.binaries.warez" entries, this pattern would be equivalent to
127 "alt.*,misc.*", since the last matching pattern determines whether a
128 given newsgroup matches and the poison logic only applies if the poison
129 entry is the last matching entry.
130 Control messages follow slightly different propagation rules than
132 normal articles; see innd(8) for the details. Note that most
133 subscriptions should have "!junk,!control,!control.*" in their pattern
134 list due to those propagation rules (and since "junk" is a special
135 internal newsgroup; see wanttrash in inn.conf(5) for more details on
136 what it's used for) and that the best way to keep control messages
137 local to a site is with a distribution.
138 A subscription can be further modified by specifying distributions that
140 the site should or should not receive. The default is to send all
141 articles to all sites that subscribe to any of the groups where it has
142 been posted, but if an article has a Distribution: header and any
143 distributions are specified, then they are checked according to the
144 following rules:
145 1. If the Distribution: header matches any of the values in the sub-
147 field, the article is sent.
148 2. If a distribution starts with an exclamation point, and it matches
150 the Distribution: header, the article is not sent.
151 3. If the Distribution: header does not match any distribution in the
153 site's entry and no negations were used, the article is not sent.
154 4. If the Distribution: header does not match any distribution in the
156 site's entry and any distribution started with an exclamation
157 point, the article is sent.
158 If an article has more than one distribution specified, then each one
160 is handled according according to the above rules. If any of the
161 specified distributions indicate that the article should be sent, it
162 is; if none do, it is not sent. In other words, the rules are used as
163 a logical or.
164 It is almost definitely a mistake to have a single feed that specifies
166 distributions that start with an exclamation point along with some that
167 don't.
168 Distributions are text words, not patterns; entries like "*" or "all"
170 have no special meaning.
171 The flag field is described in "FLAG VALUES". The interpretation of
173 the parameter field depends on the type of feed and is explained in
174 more detail in "FEED TYPES". It can be omitted for some types of
175 feeds.
176 The site named "ME" is special. There must be exactly one such entry,
178 and it should be the first entry in the file. If the "ME" entry has an
179 exclusion sub-field, incoming articles are rejected completely if any
180 of the names specified in that exclusion sub-field appear in their
181 Path: headers. If the "ME" entry has a subscription list, that list is
182 prepended to the subscription list of all other entries. For example,
183 "*,!control,!control.*,!junk,!foo.*" could be used to set the default
184 subscription list for all other feeds so that local postings are not
185 propagated unless "foo.*" explicitly appears in the site's subscription
186 list. This feature tends to be somewhat confusing since the default
187 subscription is prepended and can be overridden by other patterns.
188 If the "ME" entry has a distribution sub-field, only articles that
190 match that distribution list are accepted and all other articles with a
191 distribution are rejected. A common use for this is to put something
192 like "/!local" in the "ME" entry to reject local postings from other
193 misconfigured sites. The distribution sub-field of "ME" has no effect
194 on the acceptance or rejection of articles that do not have a
195 Distribution header field.
196 An empty "ME" entry is possible, in which case no exclusion patterns
198 will be defined.
199 Finally, it is also possible to set variables in newsfeeds and use them
201 later in the file. A line starting with "$" sets a variable. For
202 example:
203 $LOCALGROUPS=local.*,example.*
205 $CONTROLGROUPS=control,control.*
206 This sets the variable "LOCALGROUPS" to "local.*,example.*" and the
208 variable "CONTROLGROUPS" to "control,control.*". They can later be
209 used elsewhere in the file, such as in a site entry like:
210 news.example.com:$LOCALGROUPS:Tf,Wnm:
212 which is then completely equivalent to:
214 news.example.com:local.*,example.*:Tf,Wnm:
216 Variables aren't solely simple substitution. If either "!" or "@"
218 immediately preceds the variable and the value of the variable contains
219 commas, that character will be duplicated before each comma. This
220 somewhat odd-sounding behavior is designed to make it easier to use
221 variables to construct feed patterns. The utility becomes more obvious
222 when you observe that the line:
223 news.example.net:*,@$LOCALGROUPS,!$CONTROLGROUPS:Tf,Wnm:
225 is therefore equivalent to:
227 news.example.net:*,@local.*,@example.*,!control,!control.*:Tf,Wnm:
229 which (as explained below) excludes all of the groups in $LOCALGROUPS
231 and unwanted control articles from the feed to that site.
232
234 The flags parameter specifies miscellaneous parameters, including the
235 type of feed, what information should be sent to it, and various
236 limitations on what articles should be sent to a site. They may be
237 specified in any order and should be separated by commas. Flags that
238 take values should have the value immediately after the flag letter
239 with no whitespace. The valid flags are:
240 < size
242 An article will only be sent to this site if it is less than size
243 bytes long. The default is no limit.
244 > size
246 An article will only be sent to this site if it is greater than
247 size bytes long. The default is no limit.
248 A checks
250 An article will only be sent to this site if it meets the
251 requirements specified in checks, which should be chosen from the
252 following set. checks can be multiple letters if appropriate.
253 Note that this flag is not effective on funnel targets; it has to
254 be used on every funnel entry (for instance, Af is not effective on
255 the innfeed! funnel target and therefore has to be specified on
256 every funnelled news site).
257 c Exclude all kinds of control messages.
259 C Only send control messages, not regular articles.
261 d Only send articles with a Distribution: header. Combined with a
263 particular distribution value in the distribution part of the
264 site entry, this can be used to limit articles sent to a site to
265 just those with a particuliar distribution.
266 e Only send articles where every newsgroup listed in the
268 Newsgroups: header exists in the active file.
269 f Don't send articles rejected by filters. This is only useful
271 when dontrejectfiltered is set to true in inn.conf. With that
272 variable set, this lets one accept all articles but not
273 propagate filtered ones to some sites.
274 j Propagate articles according to their Newsgroups: header. This
276 is only useful when wanttrash is set to true in inn.conf. With
277 that variable set, articles accepted and filed in "junk" (due to
278 wanttrash) are fed to peers based on their subscription pattern
279 applied to the Newsgroups: header as though they were accepted
280 and all those groups were locally carried. Otherwise, they are
281 propagated to sites that receive the "junk" newsgroup.
282 This variable is useful if you want to run INN with a minimal
284 active file and propagate all posts.
285 o Only send articles for which overview data was stored.
287 O Send articles to this site that don't have an Injection-Info: or
289 X-Trace: header, even if the "O" flag is also given.
290 p Only check the exclusions against the Path: header of articles;
292 don't check the site name. This is useful if your site names
293 aren't the same as the Path: entries added by those remote
294 sites, or for program feeds where the site name is arbitrary and
295 unrelated to the Path: header.
296 If both "c" and "C" are given, the last specified one takes
298 precedence.
299 B high/low
301 If a site is being fed by a file, channel, or exploder (see below),
302 the server will normally start trying to write the information as
303 soon as possible. Providing a buffer may give better system
304 performance and help smooth out overall load if a large batch of
305 news comes in. The value of the this flag should be two numbers
306 separated by a slash. high specifies the point at which the server
307 can start draining the feed's I/O buffer, and low specifies when to
308 stop writing and begin buffering again; the units are bytes. The
309 default is to do no buffering, sending output as soon as it is
310 possible to do so.
311 C count
313 If this flag is specified, an article will only be sent to this
314 site if the number of groups it is posted to, plus the square of
315 the number of groups followups would appear in, is no more than
316 count. 30 is a good value for this flag, allowing for instance:
317 · crossposts to only 5 groups when followups aren't set;
319 · crossposts to up to 26 groups when followups are set to two
321 groups;
322 · crossposts to up to 29 groups when followups are set to a single
324 group;
325 · crossposts to up to 30 groups when followups are set to poster.
327 Note that if an article does not contain a Followup-To: header
329 field, the number of groups followups would appear in is the number
330 of groups it is posted to.
331 F name
333 Specifies the name of the file that should be used if it's
334 necessary to begin spooling for the site (see below). If name is
335 not an absolute path, it is taken to be relative to pathoutgoing in
336 inn.conf. If name is a directory, the file togo in that directory
337 will be used as the file name.
338 G count
340 If this flag is specified, an article will only be sent to this
341 site if it is posted to no more than count newsgroups. This has
342 the problem of filtering out many FAQs, as well as newsgroup
343 creation postings and similar administrative announcements. Either
344 the C flag or the U flag is a better solution.
345 H count
347 If this flag is specified, an article will only be sent to this
348 site if it has count or fewer sites in its Path: line. This flag
349 should only be used as a rough guide because of the loose
350 interpretation of the Path: header; some sites put the poster's
351 name in the header, and some sites that might logically be
352 considered to be one hop become two because they put the posting
353 workstation's name in the header. The default value for count if
354 not specified is one. (Also see the O flag, which is sometimes
355 more appropriate for some uses of this flag.)
356 I size
358 The flag specifies the size of the internal buffer for a file feed.
359 If there are more file feeds than allowed by the system, they will
360 be buffered internally in least-recently-used order. If the
361 internal buffer grows bigger then size bytes, however, the data
362 will be written out to the appropriate file. The default value is
363 16 KB.
364 N status
366 Restricts the articles sent to this site to those in newsgroups
367 with the moderation status given by status. If status is "m", only
368 articles in moderated groups are sent; if status is "u", only
369 articles in unmoderated groups are sent.
370 O originator
372 If this flag is specified, an article will only be sent to this
373 site if it contains an Injection-Info: header (or an X-Trace:
374 header if no Injection-Info: header is found) and the first field
375 of this header matches originator. originator is a uwildmat(3)
376 expression without commas or a list of such expressions, separated
377 by "/". The article is never sent if the first character of the
378 pattern begins with "@" and the rest of the pattern matches. One
379 use of this flag is to restrict the feed to locally generated posts
380 by using an originator pattern that matches the Injection-Info:
381 header added by the local server.
382 P priority
384 The nice priority that this channel or program feed should receive.
385 This should be a positive number between 0 and 20 and is the
386 priority that the new process will run with. This flag can be used
387 to raise the priority to normal if you're using the nicekids
388 parameter in inn.conf.
389 Q hashfeed
391 Specifies the hashfeed match expression for this site. It must be
392 in the form "value/mod" or "start-end/mod". The Message-ID of the
393 article is hashed using MD5, which results in a 128-bit hash. The
394 lowest 32 bits are then taken by default as the hashfeed value
395 (which is an integer). If the hashfeed value modulus "mod" plus
396 one equals "value" or is between "start" and "end", the article
397 will be fed to this site. All these numbers must be integers.
398 It is a deterministic way to control the flow of articles and to
400 split a feed. For instance:
401 Q1/2 Feeds about 50% of all articles to this site.
403 Q2/2 Feeds the other 50% of all articles.
404 Another example with three sites:
406 Q1-3/10 Feeds about 30% of all articles.
408 Q4-5/10 Feeds about 20% of all articles.
409 Q6-10/10 Feeds about 50% of all articles.
410 If this flag is specified multiple times, the contents will be
412 logically "OR"ed together (just one match is needed).
413 You can use an extended syntax of the form "value/mod_offset" or
415 "start-end/mod_offset". As MD5 generates a 128-bit return value,
416 it is possible to specify from which byte-offset the 32-bit integer
417 used by hashfeed starts. The default value for "offset" is "_0"
418 and thirteen overlapping values from "_0" to "_12" can be used.
419 Only up to four totally independent values exist: "_0", "_4", "_8"
420 and "_12".
421 Therefore, it allows generating a second level of deterministic
423 distribution. Indeed, if a news server is fed "Q1/2", it can go on
424 splitting thanks to "Q1-3/9_4" for instance. Up to four levels of
425 deterministic distribution can be used.
426 The algorithm is compatible with the one used by Diablo 5.1 and up.
428 If you want to use the legacy quickhashing method used by Diablo
429 before 5.1, you can put an "@" sign just after the Q flag (for
430 instance "Q@1-3/10", but the distribution of the messages is not
431 perfect with this legacy method whose use is discouraged and for
432 which offsets cannot be used).
433 S size
435 If the amount of data queued for the site gets to be larger than
436 size bytes, the server will switch to spooling, appending to a file
437 specified by the F flag, or pathoutgoing/sitename if F is not
438 specified. Spooling usually happens only for channel or exploder
439 feeds, when the spawned program isn't keeping up with its input.
440 T type
442 This flag specifies the type of feed for this site. type should be
443 a letter chosen from the following set:
444 c Channel
446 f File
447 l Log entry only
448 m Funnel (multiple entries feed into one)
449 p Program
450 x Exploder
451 Each feed is described below in "FEED TYPES". The default is Tf,
453 for a file feed.
454 U count
456 If this flag is specified, an article will only be sent to this
457 site if followups to this article would be posted to no more than
458 count newsgroups. (Also see C for a more complex way of handling
459 this.)
460 W items
462 For a file, channel, or exploder feed, this flag controls what
463 information will be sent to this site. For a program feed, only
464 the asterisk ("*") has any effect. items should be chosen from the
465 following set:
466 b Size of the article (in wire format, meaning with CRLF at the
468 end of each line, periods doubled at the beginning of lines, and
469 ending in a line with a single period) in bytes.
470 e The time the article will expire as seconds since epoch if it
472 has an Expires: header, 0 otherwise.
473 f The storage API token of the article (the same as "n"). The
475 article can be retrieved given the storage API token by using
476 sm(8).
477 g The newsgroup the article is in; if cross-posted, then the first
479 of the groups to which the article was posted that this site
480 gets. (The difference from "G" is that this sends the newsgroup
481 to which the article was posted even if it is a control
482 message.)
483 h The history hash key of the article (derived from the message
485 ID).
486 m The message ID of the article.
488 n The storage API token of the article. The article can be
490 retrieved given the storage API token by using sm(8).
491 p The time the article was posted a seconds since epoch.
493 s The site that fed the article to the server. This is taken from
495 either the Path: header or the IP address of the sending site
496 depending on the value of logipaddr in inn.conf. If logipaddr
497 is true and the IP address is 0.0.0.0 (meaning that the article
498 was fed from localhost by a program like rnews(8)), the Path:
499 header value will be sent instead.
500 t The time the article was received as seconds since epoch.
502 * The names of the appropriate funnel entries, or all sites that
504 get the article (see below for more details).
505 D The value of the Distribution: header of the article, or "?" if
507 there is no such header in the article.
508 G Where the article is stored. If the newsgroup is crossposted,
510 this is generally the first of the groups to which it was posted
511 that this site receives; however, control messages are filed in
512 control or control.* (which is the difference between this item
513 and "g").
514 H All of the headers, followed by a blank line. The Xref header
516 will already be present, and a Bytes header containing the
517 article's size in bytes as in the "b" item will be added to the
518 headers. If used, this should be the only item in the list.
519 N The value of the Newsgroups: header.
521 P The value of the Path: header.
523 O Overview data for the article.
525 R Information needed for replication (the Xref header without the
527 site name).
528 More than one letter can be given. If multiple items are
530 specified, they will be written in the order specified separated by
531 spaces. ("H" should be the only item if given, but if it's not a
532 newline will be sent before the beginning of the headers.) The
533 default is Wn.
534 The "H" and "O" items are intended for use by programs that create
536 news overview databases or require similar information. WnteO is
537 the flag to generate input needed by the overchan(8) program.
538 The asterisk ("*") has special meaning. Normally it expands to a
540 space-separated list of all sites that received the current
541 article. If, however, this site is a target of a funnel feed (in
542 other words, if it is named by other sites which have the Tm flag),
543 then the asterisk expands to the names of the funnel feeds that
544 received the article. Similarly, if the site is a program feed, an
545 asterisk in the parameter field will be expanded into the list of
546 funnel feeds that received the article. A program feed cannot get
547 the site list unless it is the target of other Tm feeds.
548
550 innd provides four basic types of feeds: log, file, program, and
551 channel. An exploder is a special type of channel. In addition,
552 several entries can feed into the same feed; these are funnel feeds,
553 which refer to an entry that is one of the other types. Funnel feeds
554 are partially described above with the description of the W* flag. A
555 funnel feed gets every article that would be sent to any of the feeds
556 that funnel into it and normally include the W* flag in their flags so
557 that the program processing that feed knows which sites received which
558 articles. The most common funnel feed is innfeed(8).
559 Note that the term "feed" is technically a misnomer, since the server
561 doesn't transfer articles itself and only writes data to a file,
562 program, or log telling another program to transfer the articles.
563 The simplest feed is a log feed (Tl). Other than a mention in the news
565 log file, pathlog/news, no data is written out. This is equivalent to
566 a Tf entry writing to /dev/null, except that no file is ever opened.
567 Flushing a log feed does nothing.
568 A file feed (Tf) is the next simplest type of feed. When the site
570 should receive an article, the specified data is written out to the
571 file named by the parameter field. If parameter is not an absolute
572 path, it is taken to be relative to pathoutgoing in inn.conf. If
573 parameter is not given, it defaults to pathoutgoing/sitename. The file
574 name should be unique (two file feeds should not ever point to the same
575 file).
576 File feeds are designed for use by external programs that periodically
578 process the written data. To cooperate with innd properly, such
579 external programs should first rename the batch file and then send a
580 flush command for that site to innd using ctlinnd(8). innd will then
581 write out any buffered data, close the file, and reopen it (under the
582 original name), and the program can process the data in the renamed
583 file at its leisure. File feeds are most frequently used in
584 combination with nntpsend(8).
585 A program feed (Tp) spawns a given program for every article that the
587 site receives. The parameter field must be the command line to
588 execute, and should contain one instance of %s, which will be replaced
589 by the storage API token of the article (the actual article can be
590 retrieved by the program using sm(8)). The program will not receive
591 anything on standard input (unlike earlier versions of INN, where the
592 article is sent to the program on stdin), and standard output and error
593 from the program will be set to the error log (pathlog/errlog). innd
594 will try to avoid spawning a shell if the command has no shell meta-
595 characters; this feature can be defeated if necessary for some reason
596 by appending a semi-colon to the end of the command. The full path
597 name of the program to be run must be specified unless the command will
598 be run by the shell (and it is strongly recommended that the full path
599 name always be specified regardless).
600 If a program feed is the target of a funnel, and if W* appears in the
602 flags of the site, a single asterisk may be present in the parameter
603 and will be replaced by a space-separated list of names of the sites
604 feeding into the funnel which received the relevant article. If the
605 site is not the target of a funnel, or if the W* flag is not used, the
606 asterisk has no special meaning.
607 Flushing a program feed does nothing.
609 For a channel (Tc) or exploder (Tx) feed, the parameter field again
611 names the process to start. As with program feeds, the full path to
612 the program must be specified. However, rather than spawning the
613 program for every article, it is spawned once and then whenever the
614 site receives an article, the data specified by the site flags is
615 written to the standard input of the spawned program. Standard output
616 and error are set as with program feeds. If the process exits, it will
617 be restarted automatically. If the process cannot be started, the
618 server will spool input to a file named pathoutgoing/sitename and will
619 try to start the process again later.
620 When a channel or exploder feed is flushed, the server closes its end
622 of the pipe to the program's standard input. Any pending data that has
623 not been written will be spooled; see the description of the S flag
624 above. The server will then spawn a new instance of the program. No
625 signal is sent to the program; it is up to the program handling a
626 channel or exploder feed to notice end of file on its standard input
627 and exit appropriately.
628 Exploders are a special type of channel feed. In addition to the
630 channel feed behavior described above, exploders can also be sent
631 command lines. These lines start with an exclamation point and their
632 interpretation is up to the exploder. The following commands are
633 generated automatically by the server:
634 !newgroup group
636 !rmgroup group
637 !flush
638 !flush site
639 These commands are sent whenever the ctlinnd(8) command of the same
641 name is received by the server. In addition, the ctlinnd(8) "send"
642 command can be used to send an arbitrary command line to an exploder.
643 The primary exploder is buffchan(8).
644 Finally, Tm feeds are the input to a funnel. The parameter field of
646 the site should name the site handling articles for all of the funnel
647 inputs.
648
650 The syntax of the newsfeeds file is so complex because you can specify
651 a staggering variety of feeds. INN is capable of interacting with a
652 wide variety of programs that do various things with news articles.
653 Far and away the most common two entries in newsfeeds, however, are
654 file feeds for nntpsend(8) and funnel feeds for innfeed(8).
655 The former look like this:
657 feed.example.com:*,!control,!control.*,!junk:Tf,Wnm:
659 which generates a file named pathoutgoing/feed.example.com containing
661 one line per article consisting of the storage API token, a space, and
662 the message ID.
663 The latter look like this:
665 feed.example.com:*,!control,!control.*,!junk:Tm:innfeed!
667 Very similar, except that this is the input to a funnel feed named
669 "innfeed!". One could also write this as:
670 example/feed.example.com:*,!control,!control.*,!junk:Ap,Tm:innfeed!
672 (note the Ap so that articles that contain just "example" in the Path:
674 header will still be sent), which is completely equivalent except that
675 this will be logged in pathlog/news as going to the site "example"
676 rather than "feed.example.com".
677 The typical feed entry for innfeed(8) is a good example of a channel
679 feed that's the target of various funnel feeds (make sure the path to
680 innfeed is properly set):
681 innfeed!:!*:Tc,Wnm*:<pathbin in inn.conf>/innfeed -y
683 Note that the pattern for this feed is just "!*" so that it won't
685 receive any articles directly. The feed should only receive those
686 articles that would go to one of the funnel feeds that are feeding into
687 it. innfeed(8) will receive one line per article on its standard input
688 containing the storage API token, the message ID, and a space-separated
689 list of sites that should receive that article.
690 Here's a more esoteric example of a channel feed:
692 watcher!:*:Tc,Wbnm\
694 :exec awk '$1 > 1000000 { print "BIG", $2, $3 }' > /dev/console
695 This receives the byte size of each article along with the storage API
697 token and message ID, and prints to the console a line for every
698 article that's over a million bytes. This is actually rather a strange
699 way to write this since INN can do the size check itself; the following
700 is equivalent:
701 watcher!:*:Tc,>1000000,Wbnm\
703 :exec awk '{ print "BIG", $2, $3}' > /dev/console
704 Here's a cute, really simple news to mail gateway that also serves as
706 an example of a fairly fancy program feed:
707 mailer!:!*:W*,Tp\
709 :sm %s | innmail -s "News article" *
710 Remember that %s is replaced by the storage API token, so this
712 retrieves the article and pipes it into innmail (which is safer than
713 programs like Mail(1) because it doesn't parse the body for tilde
714 commands) with a given subject line. Note the use of "*" in the
715 command line and W* in the flags; this entry is designed to be used as
716 the target of funnel feeds such as:
717 peter@example.com:news.software.nntp:Tm:mailer!
719 sue@example.com:news.admin.misc:Tm:mailer!
720 Suppose that the server receives an article crossposted between
722 news.admin.misc and news.software.nntp. The server will notice that
723 the article should be sent to the site "peter@example.com" and the site
724 "bob@example.com", both of which funnel into "mailer!", so it will look
725 at the "mailer!" site and end up executing the command line:
726 sm @...@ | innmail -s "News article" peter@example.com sue@example.com
728 which will mail the article to both Peter and Sue.
730 Finally, another very useful example of a channel feed: the standard
732 entry for controlchan(8). Make sure its path is properly set.
733 controlchan!\
735 :!*,control,control.*,!control.cancel/!collabra-internal\
736 :AC,Tc,Wnsm:<pathbin in inn.conf>/controlchan
737 This program only wants information about articles posted to a control
739 newsgroup other than control.cancel, which due to the sorting of
740 control messages described in innd(8) will send it all control messages
741 except for cancel messages. In this case, we also exclude any article
742 with a distribution of "collabra-internal". controlchan gets the
743 storage API token, the name of the sending site (for processing old-
744 style ihave and sendme control messages, be sure to read about
745 logipaddr in controlchan(8)), and the message ID for each article.
746 For many other examples, including examples of the special "ME" site
748 entry, see the example newsfeeds file distributed with INN. Also see
749 the install documentation that comes with INN for information about
750 setting up the standard newsfeeds entries used by most sites.
751
753 Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews.
754 Reformatted and rewritten in POD by Russ Allbery <eagle@eyrie.org>.
755 $Id: newsfeeds.pod 10283 2018-05-14 12:43:05Z iulius $
757
759 active(5), buffchan(8), controlchan(8), ctlinnd(8), inn.conf(5),
760 innd(8), innfeed(8), innxmit(8), nntpsend(8), uwildmat(3).
761INN 2.6.3 2018-05-14 NEWSFEEDS(5)