1INNFEED(8)                InterNetNews Documentation                INNFEED(8)
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NAME

6       innfeed, imapfeed - Multi-host, multi-connection, streaming NNTP feeder
7

SYNOPSIS

9       innfeed [-ChmMvxyz] [-a spool-dir] [-b directory] [-c config-file] [-d
10       log-level] [-e bytes] [-l logfile] [-o bytes] [-p pid-file] [-s
11       command] [-S status-file] [file]
12

DESCRIPTION

14       innfeed implements the NNTP protocol for transferring news between
15       computers.  It handles the standard IHAVE protocol as well as the
16       CHECK/TAKETHIS streaming extension.  innfeed can feed any number of
17       remote hosts at once and will open multiple connections to each host if
18       configured to do so.  The only limitations are the process limits for
19       open file descriptors and memory.
20
21       As an alternative to using NNTP, INN may also be fed to an IMAP server.
22       This is done by using an executable called imapfeed, which is identical
23       to innfeed except for the delivery process.  The new version has two
24       types of connections:  an LMTP connection to deliver regular messages
25       and an IMAP connection to handle control messages.
26

MODES

28       innfeed has three modes of operation:  channel, funnel-file and batch.
29
30       Channel mode is used when no filename is given on the command line, the
31       input-file keyword is not given in the config file, and the -x option
32       is not given.  In channel mode, innfeed runs with stdin connected via a
33       pipe to innd.  Whenever innd closes this pipe (and it has several
34       reasons during normal processing to do so), innfeed will exit.  It
35       first will try to finish sending all articles it was in the middle of
36       transmitting, before issuing a QUIT command.  This means innfeed may
37       take a while to exit depending on how slow your peers are.  It never
38       (well, almost never) just drops the connection.  The recommended way to
39       restart innfeed when run in channel mode is therefore to tell innd to
40       close the pipe and spawn a new innfeed process.  This can be done with
41       "ctlinnd flush feed" where feed is the name of the innfeed channel feed
42       in the newsfeeds file.
43
44       Funnel-file mode is used when a filename is given as an argument or the
45       input-file keyword is given in the config file.  In funnel-file mode,
46       it reads the specified file for the same formatted information as innd
47       would give in channel mode.  It is expected that innd is continually
48       writing to this file, so when innfeed reaches the end of the file, it
49       will check periodically for new information.  To prevent the funnel
50       file from growing without bounds, you will need to periodically move
51       the file to the side (or simply remove it) and have innd flush the
52       file.  Then, after the file is flushed by innd, you can send innfeed a
53       SIGALRM, and it too will close the file and open the new file created
54       by innd.  Something like:
55
56           innfeed -p <pathrun in inn.conf>/innfeed.pid my-funnel-file &
57           while true; do
58               sleep 43200
59               rm -f my-funnel-file
60               ctlinnd flush funnel-file-site
61               kill -ALRM `cat <pathrun>/innfeed.pid`
62           done
63
64       Batch mode is used when the -x flag is used.  In batch mode, innfeed
65       will ignore stdin, and will simply process any backlog created by a
66       previously running innfeed.  This mode is not normally needed as
67       innfeed will take care of backlog processing.
68

CONFIGURATION

70       innfeed expects a couple of things to be able to run correctly:  a
71       directory where it can store backlog files and a configuration file to
72       describe which peers it should handle.
73
74       The configuration file is described in innfeed.conf(5).  The -c option
75       can be used to specify a different file.  For each peer (say, "foo"),
76       innfeed manages up to 4 files in the backlog directory:
77
78       • A foo.lock file, which prevents other instances of innfeed from
79         interfering with this one.
80
81       • A foo.input file which has old article information innfeed is reading
82         for re-processing.
83
84       • A foo.output file where innfeed is writing information on articles
85         that could not be processed (normally due to a slow or blocked peer).
86
87       • A foo file that is never created by innfeed, but if innfeed notices
88         it, it will rename it to foo.input at the next opportunity and will
89         start reading from it.  This lets you create a batch file and put it
90         in a place where innfeed will find it.
91
92       You should never alter the foo.input or foo.output files of a running
93       innfeed.  The format of these last three files is one of the following:
94
95           /path/to/article <message-id>
96           @token@ <message-id>
97
98       This is the same as the first two fields of the lines innd feeds to
99       innfeed, and the same as the first two fields of the lines of the batch
100       file innd will write if innfeed is unavailable for some reason.  When
101       innfeed processes its own batch files, it ignores everything after the
102       first two whitespace separated fields, so moving the innd-created batch
103       file to the appropriate spot will work, even though the lines have
104       extra fields.
105
106       The first field can also be a storage API token.  The two types of
107       lines can be intermingled; innfeed will use the storage manager if
108       appropriate, and otherwise treat the first field as a filename to read
109       directly.
110
111       innfeed writes its current status to the file innfeed.status (or the
112       file given by the -S option).  This file contains details on the
113       process as a whole, and on each peer this instance of innfeed is
114       managing.
115
116       If innfeed is told to send an article to a host it is not managing,
117       then the article information will be put into a file matching the
118       pattern innfeed-dropped.*, with part of the file name matching the pid
119       of the innfeed process that is writing to it.  innfeed will not process
120       this file except to write to it.  If nothing is written to the file,
121       then it will be removed if innfeed exits normally.  Otherwise, the file
122       remains, and procbatch can be invoked to process it afterwards.
123

SIGNALS

125       Upon receipt of a SIGALRM, innfeed will close the funnel file specified
126       on the command line, and will reopen it (see funnel file description
127       above).
128
129       innfeed with catch SIGINT and will write a large debugging snapshot of
130       the state of the running system.
131
132       innfeed will catch SIGHUP and will reload both the config and the log
133       files.  See innfeed.conf(5) for more details.
134
135       innfeed will catch SIGCHLD and will close and reopen all backlog files.
136
137       innfeed will catch SIGTERM and will do an orderly shutdown.
138
139       Upon receipt of a SIGUSR1, innfeed will increment the debugging level
140       by one; receipt of a SIGUSR2 will decrement it by one.  The debugging
141       level starts at zero (unless the -d option it used), in which case no
142       debugging information is emitted.  A larger value for the level means
143       more debugging information. Numbers up to 5 are currently useful.
144

SYSLOG ENTRIES

146       There are 3 different categories of syslog entries for statistics:
147       host, connection and global.
148
149       The host statistics are generated for a given peer at regular intervals
150       after the first connection is made (or, if the remote is unreachable,
151       after spooling starts).  The host statistics give totals over all
152       connections that have been active during the given time frame.  For
153       example (broken here to fit the page, with "vixie" being the peer):
154
155           May 23 12:49:08 news innfeed[16015]: vixie checkpoint
156               seconds 1381 offered 2744 accepted 1286 refused 1021 rejected 437
157               missing 0 accsize 8506220 rejsize 142129 spooled 990
158               on_close 0 unspooled 240 deferred 10/15.3 requeued 25
159               queue 42.1/100:14,35,13,4,24,10
160
161       The meanings of these fields are:
162
163       seconds
164         The time since innfeed connected to the host or since the statistics
165         were reset by a "final" log entry.
166
167       offered
168         The number of IHAVE commands sent to the host if it is not in
169         streaming mode.  The sum of the number of TAKETHIS commands sent when
170         no-CHECK mode is in effect plus the number of CHECK commands sent in
171         streaming mode (when no-CHECK mode is not in effect).
172
173       accepted
174         The number of articles which were sent to the remote host and
175         accepted by it.
176
177       refused
178         The number of articles offered to the host that it indicated it did
179         not want because it had already seen the message-ID.  The remote host
180         indicates this by sending a 435 response to an IHAVE command or a 438
181         response to a CHECK command.
182
183       rejected
184         The number of articles transferred to the host that it did not accept
185         because it determined either that it already had the article or it
186         did not want it because of the article's Newsgroups: or Distribution:
187         header fields, etc.  The remote host indicates that it is rejecting
188         the article by sending a 437 or 439 response after innfeed sent the
189         entire article.
190
191       missing
192         The number of articles which innfeed was told to offer to the host
193         but which were not present in the article spool.  These articles were
194         probably cancelled or expired before innfeed was able to offer them
195         to the host.
196
197       accsize
198         The number of bytes of all accepted articles transferred to the host.
199
200       rejsize
201         The number of bytes of all rejected articles transferred to the host.
202
203       spooled
204         The number of article entries that were written to the .output
205         backlog file because the articles either could not be sent to the
206         host or were refused by it.  Articles are generally spooled either
207         because new articles are arriving more quickly than they can be
208         offered to the host, or because innfeed closed all the connections to
209         the host and pushed all the articles currently in progress to the
210         .output backlog file.
211
212       on_close
213         The number of articles that were spooled when innfeed closed all the
214         connections to the host.
215
216       unspooled
217         The number of article entries that were read from the .input backlog
218         file.
219
220       deferred
221         The first number is the number of articles that the host told innfeed
222         to retry later by sending a 431 or 436 response.  innfeed immediately
223         puts these articles back on the tail of the queue.
224
225         The second number is the average (mean) size of deferred articles
226         during the previous logging interval
227
228       requeued
229         The number of articles that were in progress on connections when
230         innfeed dropped those connections and put the articles back on the
231         queue.  These connections may have been broken by a network problem
232         or became unresponsive causing innfeed to time them out.
233
234       queue
235         The first number is the average (mean) queue size during the previous
236         logging interval.  The second number is the maximum allowable queue
237         size.  The third number is the percentage of the time that the queue
238         was empty.  The fourth through seventh numbers are the percentages of
239         the time that the queue was >0% to 25% full, 25% to 50% full, 50% to
240         75% full, and 75% to <100% full.  The last number is the percentage
241         of the time that the queue was totally full.
242
243       If the -z option is used (see below), then when the peer stats are
244       generated, each connection will log its stats too.  For example, for
245       connection number zero (from a set of five):
246
247           May 23 12:49:08 news innfeed[16015]: vixie:0 checkpoint
248               seconds 1381 offered 596 accepted 274 refused 225
249               rejected 97 accsize 773623 rejsize 86591
250
251       If you only open a maximum of one connection to a remote, then there
252       will be a close correlation between connection numbers and host
253       numbers, but in general you cannot tie the two sets of number together
254       in any easy or very meaningful way.  When a connection closes, it will
255       always log its stats.
256
257       If all connections for a host get closed together, then the host logs
258       its stats as "final" and resets its counters.  If the feed is so busy
259       that there is always at least one connection open and running, then
260       after some amount of time (set via the config file), the host stats are
261       logged as final and reset.  This is to make generating higher level
262       stats from log files, by other programs, easier.
263
264       There is one log entry that is emitted for a host just after its last
265       connection closes and innfeed is preparing to exit.  This entry
266       contains counts over the entire life of the process.  The "seconds"
267       field is from the first time a connection was successfully built, or
268       the first time spooling started.  If a host has been completely idle,
269       it will have no such log entry.
270
271           May 23 12:49:08 news innfeed[16015]: decwrl global
272               seconds 1381 offered 34 accepted 22 refused 3 rejected 7
273               missing 0 accsize 81277 rejsize 12738 spooled 0 unspooled 0
274
275       The final log entry is emitted immediately before exiting.  It contains
276       a summary of the statistics over the entire life of the process.
277
278           Feb 13 14:43:41 news innfeed[22344]: ME global
279               seconds 15742 offered 273441 accepted 45750 refused 222008
280               rejected 3334 missing 217 accsize 93647166 rejsize 7421839
281               spooled 10 unspooled 0
282

OPTIONS

284       innfeed takes the following options.
285
286       -a spool-dir
287           The -a flag is used to specify the top of the article spool tree.
288           innfeed does a chdir(2) to this directory, so it should probably be
289           an absolute path.  The default is patharticles as set in inn.conf.
290
291       -b directory
292           The -b flag may be used to specify a different directory for
293           backlog file storage and retrieval, as well as for lock files.  If
294           the path is relative, then it is relative to pathspool as set in
295           inn.conf.  The default is "innfeed".
296
297       -c config-file
298           The -c flag may be used to specify a different config file from the
299           default value.  If the path is relative, then it is relative to
300           pathetc as set in inn.conf.  The default is innfeed.conf.
301
302       -C  The -C flag is used to have innfeed simply check the config file,
303           report on any errors and then exit.
304
305       -d log-level
306           The -d flag may be used to specify the initial logging level.  All
307           debugging messages go to stderr (which may not be what you want,
308           see the -l flag below).
309
310       -e bytes
311           The -e flag may be used to specify the size limit (in bytes) for
312           the .output backlog files innfeed creates.  If the output file gets
313           bigger than 10% more than the given number, innfeed will replace
314           the output file with the tail of the original version.  The default
315           value is 0, which means there is no limit.
316
317       -h  Use the -h flag to print the usage message.
318
319       -l logfile
320           The -l flag may be used to specify a different log file from
321           stderr.  As innd starts innfeed with stderr attached to /dev/null,
322           using this option can be useful in catching any abnormal error
323           messages, or any debugging messages (all "normal" errors messages
324           go to syslog).
325
326       -m  The -m flag is used to turn on logging of all missing articles.
327           Normally, if an article is missing, innfeed keeps a count, but logs
328           no further information.  When this flag is used, details about
329           message-IDs and expected path names are logged.
330
331       -M  If innfeed has been built with mmap support, then the -M flag turns
332           OFF the use of mmap(); otherwise, it has no effect.
333
334       -o bytes
335           The -o flag sets a value of the maximum number of bytes of article
336           data innfeed is supposed to keep in memory.  This does not work
337           properly yet.
338
339       -p pid-file
340           The -p flag is used to specify the file name to write the pid of
341           the process into.  A relative path is relative to pathrun as set in
342           inn.conf.  The default is innfeed.pid.
343
344       -s command
345           The -s flag specifies the name of a command to run in a subprocess
346           and read article information from.  This is similar to channel mode
347           operation, only that command takes the place usually occupied by
348           innd.
349
350       -S status-file
351           The -S flag specifies the name of the file to write the periodic
352           status to.  If the path is relative, it is considered relative to
353           pathlog as set in inn.conf.  The default is innfeed.status.
354
355       -v  When the -v flag is given, version information is printed to stderr
356           and then innfeed exits.
357
358       -x  The -x flag is used to tell innfeed not to expect any article
359           information from innd but just to process any backlog files that
360           exist and then exit.
361
362       -y  The -y flag is used to allow dynamic peer binding.  If this flag is
363           used and article information is received from innd that specifies
364           an unknown peer, then the peer name is taken to be the IP name too,
365           and an association with it is created.  Using this, it is possible
366           to only have the global defaults in the innfeed.conf file, provided
367           the peer name as used by innd is the same as the IP name.
368
369           Note that innfeed with -y and no peer in innfeed.conf would cause a
370           problem that innfeed drops the first article.
371
372       -z  The -z flag is used to cause each connection, in a parallel feed
373           configuration, to report statistics when the controller for the
374           connections prints its statistics.
375

BUGS

377       When using the -x option, the config file entry's initial-connections
378       field will be the total number of connections created and used, no
379       matter how many big the batch file, and no matter how big the max-
380       connections field specifies.  Thus a value of 0 for initial-connections
381       means nothing will happen in -x mode.
382
383       innfeed does not automatically grab the file out of pathoutgoing.  This
384       needs to be prepared for it by external means.
385
386       Probably too many other bugs to count.
387

ALTERNATIVE

389       An alternative to innfeed can be innduct, maintained by Ian Jackson and
390       available at
391       <http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/ucgi/~ian/git-manpage/innduct.git/innduct.8>.
392       It is intended to solve a design issue in the way innfeed works.  As a
393       matter of fact, the program feed protocol spoken between innd and
394       innfeed is lossy:  if innfeed dies unexpectedly, articles which innd
395       has written to the pipe to innfeed will be skipped.  innd has no way of
396       telling which articles those are, no useful records, and no attempts to
397       resend these articles.
398

FILES

400       pathbin/innfeed
401           The binary program itself.
402
403       pathetc/innfeed.conf
404           The configuration file.
405
406       pathspool/innfeed
407           The directory for backlog files.
408

HISTORY

410       Written by James Brister <brister@vix.com> for InterNetNews.  Converted
411       to POD by Julien Elie.
412
413       Earlier versions of innfeed (up to 0.10.1) were shipped separately;
414       innfeed is now part of INN and shares the same version number.
415

SEE ALSO

417       ctlinnd(8), inn.conf(5), innfeed.conf(5), innd(8), procbatch(8).
418
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421INN 2.6.5                         2022-01-23                        INNFEED(8)
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