1MAILPOST(8) InterNetNews Documentation MAILPOST(8)
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6 mailpost - Feed an e-mail message into a newsgroup
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9 mailpost [-hn] [-a addr] [-b database] [-c wait-time] [-d distribution]
10 [-f addr] [-m mailing-list] [-o output-command] [-p port] [-r addr] [-t
11 tempdir] [-x header[:header...]] [-z header[:header...]] newsgroups
12
14 The mailpost program reads a properly formatted e-mail message from
15 stdin and feeds it to inews for posting to a news server. newsgroups
16 is a whitespace-separated list of group names to which to post the
17 article (at least one newsgroup must be specified).
18 Before feeding the article to inews, it checks that the article has not
20 been seen before, and it changes some header fields (cleans up some
21 address headers, removes a few ones like X-Complaints-To: and X-Trace:,
22 and puts "X-" in front of unknown header fields). The Received: and
23 *-To: header fields are also altered to prevent spamming the gateway
24 (the name of the news server or the domain name from inn.conf are
25 removed).
26 If the article has been seen before (mailpost records the message-ID of
28 each article it handles), then the article will be dropped with a non-
29 zero error status. Other errors will cause the article to be mailed to
30 the newsmaster (selected at configure time and defaulting to "usenet").
31 Normally, mailpost is run by sendmail(8) via an alias entry:
33 local-mail-wreck-bikes: "|<pathbin in inn.conf>/mailpost
35 -b /var/tmp -t /var/tmp -d local local.mail.rec.bicycles.racing"
36 The -b and -t flags are useful to change the directories used by
38 mailpost by default. As a matter of fact, though it is recommended to
39 run mailpost as the news user, it is as often as not run as another
40 user, for instance the mail user. Therefore, you should make sure to
41 create and set to be writable by the user that mailpost runs as the
42 directories where to put the database and the temporary files.
43 Instead of /var/tmp, the mail spool directory can be specified, or any
45 other directory where the mailpost process has write access.
46
48 -a addr
49 If the -a flag is used, the value given is added to the article as
50 an Approved: header.
51 -b database
53 If the -b flag is used, then it defines the location of the
54 persistent database used to store the message-IDs of articles sent
55 on. This is to prevent articles looping around if a news-to-mail
56 gateway sends them back here. This option may be required if the
57 mailpost process does not have write access to the news database
58 directory. The default value is pathdb as set in inn.conf.
59 -c wait-time
61 The -c flag indicates a length of time to sleep before posting. If
62 duplicate messages are received in this interval (by any instance
63 of mailpost using the same database), the article is only posted
64 once, but with Newsgroups: header modified to crosspost the article
65 to all indicated groups. The units for wait-time are seconds; a
66 reasonable value may be anywhere from tens to hundreds of seconds,
67 or even higher, depending on how long mail can be delayed on its
68 way to your system.
69 -d distribution
71 If the -d flag is used, the value given is added to the article as
72 a Distribution: header.
73 -f addr
75 The -f flag is a synonym for the -r flag.
76 -h Print usage information and exit.
78 -m mailing-list
80 If the -m flag is used, the value given is added to the article in
81 a Mailing-List: header, if such a header doesn't already exist.
82 -n If the -n flag is used, neither an article is posted nor a mail is
84 sent in case an error occurs. Everything is written to the
85 standard output.
86 -o output-command
88 Specifies the program to which the resulting article processed by
89 mailpost should be sent. For debugging purpose, "-o cat" can be
90 used. The default value is "inews -S -h".
91 -p port
93 Specifies the port on which nnrpd is listening, used for article
94 posting. If given, -p is passed along to inews.
95 -r addr
97 A heuristic is used to determine a reasonable value for the Path:
98 header. The -r flag indicates what to use if no other value can be
99 determined.
100 -t tempdir
102 If the -t flag is used, then it defines the location of the
103 directory to use to temporarily store error messages that are sent
104 to the newsmaster. This option may be required if the default
105 value refers to a path that does not exist or the mailpost process
106 does not have write access to. Two paths are tried by default:
107 pathtmp as set in inn.conf, and then /var/tmp if pathtmp is not
108 writable.
109 -x header[:header...]
111 A colon-separated list of additional header fields which should be
112 treated as known header fields; these header fields will be passed
113 through to inews without having "X-" prepended.
114 Known header fields are:
116 Archive
118 Archived-At
119 Comments
120 Content-*
121 Date
122 Distribution
123 From
124 Injection-Date
125 Keywords
126 Mailing-List
127 Message-ID
128 MIME-*
129 Organization
130 References
131 Return-Path
132 Sender
133 Subject
134 Summary
135 -z header[:header...]
137 A colon-separated list of additional header fields which should be
138 removed.
139 Removed header fields are:
141 X-Trace
143 X-Complaints-To
144
146 pathbin/mailpost
147 The Perl script itself used to feed an e-mail message to a
148 newsgroup.
149 pathdb/mailpost-msgid.dir and pathdb/mailpost-msgid.pag
151 The default database files which record previously seen message-
152 IDs.
153
155 Written by Paul Vixie long ago and then hacked up by James Brister for
156 INN integration.
157 $Id: mailpost.in 10171 2017-07-22 14:01:37Z iulius $
159
161 active(5), inews(1), inn.conf(5), nnrpd(8), uwildmat(3).
162INN 2.6.3 2018-01-28 MAILPOST(8)