1RNEWS(1)                  InterNetNews Documentation                  RNEWS(1)
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NAME

6       rnews - Inject individual articles and UUCP batches into INN
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SYNOPSIS

9       rnews [-abdNUv] [-h host] [-P port] [-rS server] [file]
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DESCRIPTION

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       If authentication credentials are present for the remote server in the
19       passwd.nntp file in pathetc, then rnews will use them to authenticate.
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21       The message is read from file if given, spooled files (with the -U
22       flag) or standard input if no file is given.  Articles are sent to the
23       server given in the -r or -S command line options if given, otherwise
24       to the server set via nnrpdposthost in inn.conf, otherwise to the local
25       server.
26
27       When sent over UUCP, Usenet articles are typically collected in a
28       single batch to reduce the UUCP overhead.  Batches can also be
29       compressed to reduce communication time.  If the input to rnews does
30       not begin with the characters "#!", it is taken to be a single news
31       article; otherwise, the first line of the input is interpreted as a
32       batch command.
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34       If the batch command is:
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36           #! rnews <number>
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38       then the next <number> bytes (starting with the next line) are read as
39       a news article.  After that article is processed, the next line is
40       again treated as a batch command.
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42       If the command is:
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44           #! cunbatch
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46       then the rest of the input is fed to "gzip -d" to uncompress it, and
47       then the resulting uncompressed output is re-read as if it were the
48       original input to rnews.  A compressed batch should therefore start
49       with this line and contain a batch of articles separated by "#! rnews"
50       lines and then compressed with compress(1).  (Batches compressed with
51       gzip(1) should instead use "gunbatch" as the batch command; INN just
52       uses gzip rather than compress because it can handle compress-style
53       compression but is more widely available, due to old patent issues,
54       than compress.)
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56       Otherwise, if the command is any other word and the -a flag is not
57       given, rnews will try to execute a program with that name, looking for
58       it in the directory pathbin/rnews.libexec.  The rest of the batch will
59       be fed to that program's standard input, and the standard output from
60       the program will be treated as if it were the original input to rnews.
61       INN comes with three such standard batch processors:
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63       bunbatch
64         It invokes bzip2 and should be used for batches compressed with
65         bzip2.
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67       c7unbatch
68         It undoes an ASCII encoding to recover the original binary compressed
69         stream and then decompresses it as explained above.
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71       gunbatch
72         It invokes gzip and should be used for batches compressed with gzip.
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OPTIONS

75       -a  By default, rnews looks for additional unpackers in the
76           rnews.libexec sub-directory of pathbin (as set in inn.conf).  If -a
77           is given, no additional batch processor will be used; only "rnews"
78           and "cunbatch" will be recognized as valid batch commands.
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80       -b  By default, rnews will log and discard any articles that are
81           rejected by the server or cannot be parsed by rnews for some reason
82           (such as a missing header field).  If -b is given, rejected
83           articles will also be backed up in the bad sub-directory of
84           pathincoming (as set in inn.conf).
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86       -d  If -d is given, rnews will log via syslog the message-ID and the
87           Path header field body of each article rejected as a duplicate by
88           the server.
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90       -h host
91           If -h is given, rnews will log the message ID and host via syslog
92           for each article that it offers to the server.  This is used in
93           conjunction with a UUCP feed to get a log of the messages received
94           via that feed.  This will also be done if the environment variable
95           UU_MACHINE is set, but will only be done if host is not an empty
96           string.  (You can therefore turn off logging even if UU_MACHINE
97           will be set by passing the flag "-h ''" to rnews.)
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99       -N  Normally, if unpacking the input batch fails, it is re-spooled to
100           pathincoming for another attempt later.  If the -N flag is given,
101           no such re-spooling is done and rnews will instead exit with status
102           9 if unpacking fails.
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104       -P port
105           Use port as the server port to connect to rather than nnrpdpostport
106           (as set in inn.conf).  Note that this value is only used if rnews
107           does not connect to the local server (in other words, when -r or -S
108           is given or nnrpdposthost is set).
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110       -r server, -S server
111           -r and -S are synonymous.  If either is given, articles will be
112           sent to server rather than using the local server, overriding also
113           the setting of nnrpdposthost in inn.conf.
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115       -U  If the server is not available, both rnews and nnrpd will spool
116           posts to new files in the pathincoming directory (as specified in
117           inn.conf).  When rnews is invoked with the -U option, it scans that
118           directory and processes all spooled messages found there whose
119           filenames do not begin with ".", attempting to send them to the
120           server again.  It's a good idea to run this periodically out of
121           cron to pick up any articles spooled due to temporary server
122           unavailability.
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124       -v  Enable verbose mode, with more traces, notably logging the reason
125           why articles are rejected by the server.
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BUGS

128       rnews cannot process articles that have embedded nul characters in
129       them.  (Neither can the rest of INN at present.)
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HISTORY

132       Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews.  Rewritten
133       in POD by Russ Allbery <eagle@eyrie.org>.
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SEE ALSO

136       bzip2(1), compress(1), gzip(1), inn.conf(5), innd(8), nnrpd(8),
137       passwd.nntp(5).
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141INN 2.7.0                         2022-07-10                          RNEWS(1)
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