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 [-abdNUv] [-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.
17 The message is read from file if given, spooled files (with the -U
19 flag) or standard input if no file is given. Articles are sent to the
20 server given in the -r or -S command line options if given, otherwise
21 to the server set via nnrpdposthost in inn.conf, otherwise to the local
22 server.
23 When sent over UUCP, Usenet articles are typically collected in a
25 single batch to reduce the UUCP overhead. Batches can also be
26 compressed to reduce communication time. If the input to rnews does
27 not begin with the characters "#!", it is taken to be a single news
28 article; otherwise, the first line of the input is interpreted as a
29 batch command.
30 If the batch command is:
32 #! rnews <number>
34 then the next <number> bytes (starting with the next line) are read as
36 a news article. After that article is processed, the next line is
37 again treated as a batch command.
38 If the command is:
40 #! cunbatch
42 then the rest of the input is fed to "gzip -d" to uncompress it, and
44 then the resulting uncompressed output is re-read as if it were the
45 original input to rnews. A compressed batch should therefore start
46 with this line and contain a batch of articles separated by "#! rnews"
47 lines and then compressed with compress(1). (Batches compressed with
48 gzip(1) should instead use "gunbatch" as the batch command; INN just
49 uses gzip rather than compress because it can handle compress-style
50 compression but is more widely available, due to old patent issues,
51 than compress.)
52 Otherwise, if the command is any other word and the -a flag is not
54 given, rnews will try to execute a program with that name, looking for
55 it in the directory pathbin/rnews.libexec. The rest of the batch will
56 be fed to that program's standard input, and the standard output from
57 the program will be treated as if it were the original input to rnews.
58 INN comes with three such standard batch processors:
59 bunbatch
61 It invokes bzip2 and should be used for batches compressed with
62 bzip2.
63 c7unbatch
65 It undoes an ASCII encoding to recover the original binary compressed
66 stream and then decompresses it as explained above.
67 gunbatch
69 It invokes gzip and should be used for batches compressed with gzip.
70
72 -a By default, rnews looks for additional unpackers in the
73 rnews.libexec sub-directory of pathbin (as set in inn.conf). If -a
74 is given, no additional batch processor will be used; only "rnews"
75 and "cunbatch" will be recognized as valid batch commands.
76 -b By default, rnews will log and discard any articles that are
78 rejected by the server or cannot be parsed by rnews for some reason
79 (such as a missing header). If -b is given, rejected articles will
80 also be backed up in the bad sub-directory of pathincoming (as set
81 in inn.conf).
82 -d If -d is given, rnews will log via syslog the message-ID and the
84 Path header value of each article rejected as a duplicate by the
85 server.
86 -h host
88 If -h is given, rnews will log the message ID and host via syslog
89 for each article that it offers to the server. This is used in
90 conjunction with a UUCP feed to get a log of the messages received
91 via that feed. This will also be done if the environment variable
92 UU_MACHINE is set, but will only be done if host is not an empty
93 string. (You can therefore turn off logging even if UU_MACHINE
94 will be set by passing the flag "-h ''" to rnews.)
95 -N Normally, if unpacking the input batch fails, it is re-spooled to
97 pathincoming for another attempt later. If the -N flag is given,
98 no such re-spooling is done and rnews will instead exit with status
99 9 if unpacking fails.
100 -P port
102 Use port as the server port to connect to rather than nnrpdpostport
103 (as set in inn.conf). Note that this value is only used if rnews
104 does not connect to the local server (in other words, when -r or -S
105 is given or nnrpdposthost is set).
106 -r server, -S server
108 -r and -S are synonymous. If either is given, articles will be
109 sent to server rather than using the local server, overriding also
110 the setting of nnrpdposthost in inn.conf.
111 -U If the server is not available, both rnews and nnrpd will spool
113 posts to new files in the pathincoming directory (as specified in
114 inn.conf). When rnews is invoked with the -U option, it scans that
115 directory and processes all spooled messages found there whose
116 filenames do not begin with ".", attempting to send them to the
117 server again. It's a good idea to run this periodically out of
118 cron to pick up any articles spooled due to temporary server
119 unavailability.
120 -v Enable verbose mode, with more traces, notably logging the reason
122 why articles are rejected by the server.
123
125 rnews cannot process articles that have embedded nul characters in
126 them. (Neither can the rest of INN at present.)
127
129 Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews. Rewritten
130 in POD by Russ Allbery <eagle@eyrie.org>.
131 $Id: rnews.pod 10382 2020-05-24 10:24:37Z iulius $
133
135 bzip2(1), compress(1), gzip(1), inn.conf(5), innd(8), nnrpd(8).
136INN 2.6.4 2020-11-22 RNEWS(1)