1FILECHAN(8) System Manager's Manual FILECHAN(8)
2
6 filechan - file-writing backend for InterNetNews
7
9 filechan [ -d directory ] [ -f num_fields ] [ -m mapfile ] [ -p pidfile
10 ]
11
13 Filechan reads lines from standard input and copies certain fields in
14 each line into files named by other fields within the line. Filechan
15 is intended to be called by innd(8) as a channel feed. (It is not a
16 full exploder and does not accept commands; see newsfeeds(5) for a
17 description of the difference, and buffchan(8) for an exploder pro‐
18 gram.)
19 Filechan input is interpreted as a sequence of lines. Each line con‐
21 tains a fixed number of initial fields, followed by a variable number
22 of filename fields. All fields in a line are separated by whitespace.
23 The default number of initial fields is one.
24 For each line of input, filechan writes the initial fields, separated
26 by whitespace and followed by a newline, to each of the files named in
27 the filename fields. When writing to a file, filechan opens it in
28 append mode and tries to lock it and change the ownership to the user
29 and group who owns the directory where the file is being written.
30 Because the time window in which a file is open is very small, compli‐
32 cated flushing and locking protocols are not needed; a mv(1) followed
33 by a sleep(1) for a couple of seconds is sufficient.
34
36 -f num_fields
37 The ``-f'' flag may be used to specify a different number of
38 initial fields.
39 -d directory
41 By default, filechan writes its output into the directory
42 <pathoutgoing in inn.conf>. The ``-d'' flag may be used to
43 specify a directory the program should change to before start‐
44 ing.
45 -p pidfile
47 If the ``-p'' flag is used, the program will write a line con‐
48 taining its process ID (in text) to the specified file.
49 -m mapfile
51 A map file may be specified by using the ``-m'' flag. Blank
52 lines and lines starting with a number sign (``#'') are ignored.
53 All other lines should have two host names separated by a colon.
54 The first field is the name that may appear in the input stream;
55 the second field names the file to be used when the name in the
56 first field appears. For example, the following map file may be
57 used to map the short names used in the example below to the
58 full domain names:
59 # This is a comment
61 uunet:news.uu.net
62 foo:foo.com
63 munnari:munnari.oz.au
64
66 If filechan is invoked with ``-f 2'' and given the following input:
67 news/software/b/132 <1643@munnari.oz.au> foo uunet
69 news/software/b/133 <102060@litchi.foo.com> uunet munnari
70 comp/sources/unix/2002 <999@news.foo.com> foo uunet munnari
71 Then the file foo will have these lines:
73 news/software/b/132 <1643@munnari.oz.au>
75 comp/sources/unix/2002 <999@news.foo.com>
76 the file munnari will have these lines:
78 news/software/b/133 <102060@litchi.foo.com>
80 comp/sources/unix/2002 <999@news.foo.com>
81 and the file uunet will have these lines:
83 news/software/b/132 <1643@munnari.oz.au>
85 news/software/b/133 <102060@litchi.foo.com>
86 comp/sources/unix/2002 <999@news.foo.com>
87
89 Written by Robert Elz <kre@munnari.oz.au>, flags added by Rich $alz
90 <rsalz@uunet.uu.net>. This is revision 5909, dated 2002-12-03.
91
93 buffchan(8), inn.conf(5), innd(8), newsfeeds(5).
94 FILECHAN(8)