1RNEWS(1) InterNetNews Documentation RNEWS(1)
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6 rnews - Inject individual articles and UUCP batches into INN
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9 rnews [-NUv] [-h host] [-P port] [-rS server] [file]
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12 rnews injects either individual articles or UUCP-style article batches
13 into an INN server. It submits articles via IHAVE and is suitable for
14 injecting articles received from other sources; local postings should
15 generally use inews(1) instead. It is also used to process spooled
16 messages created by, for example, nnrpd while innd is not available.
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18 The message is read from file if given, or standard input if no file is
19 given. Articles are sent to the server given in the -r or -S command
20 line options if given, otherwise to the server set via nnrpdposthost in
21 inn.conf, otherwise to the local server.
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23 When sent over UUCP, Usenet articles are typically collected in a
24 single batch to reduce the UUCP overhead. Batches can also be
25 compressed to reduce communication time. If the input to rnews does
26 not begin with the characters "#!", it is taken to be a single news
27 article; otherwise, the first line of the input is interpreted as a
28 batch command.
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30 If the batch command is:
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32 #! rnews <number>
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34 then the next <number> bytes (starting with the next line) are read as
35 a news article. After that article is processed, the next line is
36 again treated as a batch command.
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38 If the command is:
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40 #! cunbatch
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42 then the rest of the input is fed to "gzip -d" to uncompress it, and
43 then the resulting uncompressed output is re-read as if it were the
44 original input to rnews. A compressed batch should therefore start
45 with this line and contain a batch of articles separated by "#! rnews"
46 lines and then compressed with compress(1). (Batches compressed with
47 gzip(1) should instead use "gunbatch" as the batch command; INN just
48 uses gzip rather than compress because it can handle compress-style
49 compression but is more widely available, due to old patent issues,
50 than compress.)
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52 Otherwise, if the command is any other word, then rnews will try to
53 execute a program with that name, looking for it in the directory
54 pathbin/rnews.libexec. The rest of the batch will be fed to that
55 program's standard input, and the standard output from the program will
56 be treated as if it were the original input to rnews. INN comes with
57 three such standard batch processors:
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59 bunbatch
60 It invokes bzip2 and should be used for batches compressed with
61 bzip2.
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63 c7unbatch
64 It undoes an ASCII encoding to recover the original binary compressed
65 stream and then decompresses it as explained above.
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67 gunbatch
68 It invokes gzip and should be used for batches compressed with gzip.
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70 By default, rnews will log and discard any articles that are rejected
71 by the server or cannot be parsed by rnews for some reason (such as a
72 missing header). This default can be changed when compiling INN by
73 setting DO_RNEWS_SAVE_BAD in include/inn/options.h. There is no way to
74 change it at runtime, unfortunately.
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77 -h host
78 If -h is given, rnews will log the message ID and host via syslog
79 for each article that it offers to the server. This is used in
80 conjunction with a UUCP feed to get a log of the messages received
81 via that feed. This will also be done if the environment variable
82 UU_MACHINE is set, but will only be done if host is not an empty
83 string. (You can therefore turn off logging even if UU_MACHINE
84 will be set by passing the flag "-h ''" to rnews.)
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86 -N Normally, if unpacking the input batch fails, it is re-spooled to
87 pathincoming for another attempt later. If the -N flag is given,
88 no such re-spooling is done and rnews will instead exit with status
89 9 if unpacking fails.
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91 -P port
92 Use port as the server port to connect to rather than nnrpdpostport
93 (as set in inn.conf). Note that this value is only used if rnews
94 does not connect to the local server (in other words, when -r or -S
95 is given or nnrpdposthost is set).
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97 -r server, -S server
98 -r and -S are synonymous. If either is given, articles will be
99 sent to server rather than using the local server, overriding also
100 the setting of nnrpdposthost in inn.conf.
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102 -U If the server is not available, both rnews and nnrpd will spool
103 posts to new files in the pathincoming directory (as specified in
104 inn.conf). When rnews is invoked with the -U option, it scans that
105 directory and processes all spooled messages found there whose
106 filenames do not begin with ".", attempting to send them to the
107 server again. It's a good idea to run this periodically out of
108 cron to pick up any articles spooled due to temporary server
109 unavailability.
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112 rnews cannot process articles that have embedded nul characters in
113 them. (Neither can the rest of INN at present.)
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116 Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews. Rewritten
117 in POD by Russ Allbery <eagle@eyrie.org>.
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119 $Id: rnews.pod 9767 2014-12-07 21:13:43Z iulius $
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122 bzip2(1), compress(1), gzip(1), inn.conf(5), innd(8), nnrpd(8).
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126INN 2.6.3 2015-09-12 RNEWS(1)