1GENCANCEL(1) InterNetNews Documentation GENCANCEL(1)
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6 gencancel - Generate cancel control messages
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9 gencancel [-adkLm] [-b body] [-c charset] [-f from] [-n newsgroups] [-s
10 subject] message-id
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13 gencancel provides the news administrator with a helpful tool to
14 generate cancel control messages, writing them to standard output. The
15 generated cancel article can then be injected by inews (see examples
16 below).
17 gencancel expects the Message-ID of the article to cancel; this
19 message-id argument should properly be quoted for the shell and
20 surrounded by angle brackets. gencancel will then try to read the
21 original article in the news spool to determine the original newsgroups
22 it was posted to, and re-use that information for the cancel control
23 message. If you want to modify that, or if the information was not
24 found, you'll have to set it with the -n flag.
25 If INN was built with Cancel-Lock support, gencancel will generate the
27 right admin Cancel-Key header field to use in order to authenticate
28 cancels. If, for whatever reason, you need cancelling an article
29 posted from your news server with a Cancel-Lock header field, the
30 corresponding admin Cancel-Key hashes are needed to authenticate the
31 withdrawal request. That information is computed with the canlockadmin
32 parameter set in inn-secrets.conf.
33 In case you only need the admin Cancel-Key hashes, you can use the -k
35 flag. Only the body of the Cancel-Key header field will then be
36 written to standard output. You can then re-use it for instance in a
37 supersede request or from another script.
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40 -a gencancel outputs by default an Approved header field, using the
41 same value as the From header field body. If -a is used, no
42 Approved header field is output.
43 This header field is useful for cancelling articles originally
45 posted to moderated newsgroups. If a cancel control article lists
46 a moderated newsgroup in its Newsgroups header field, and no
47 Approved header field is present, the cancel will be sent to the
48 moderator first for approval. Cancel control messages are not
49 required to contain an Approved header field outside of moderated
50 newsgroups, but can, so you shouldn't generally use -a unless you
51 really want your cancels to be approved by a moderator, or are sure
52 the Newsgroups header field does not list any moderated newsgroups.
53 -b body
55 gencancel writes by default "Admin cancel." in the body of cancel
56 control messages. Using this argument permits writing a different
57 value, which may be empty or multi-line.
58 -c charset
60 By default, "ISO-8859-1" is specified as the used charset in the
61 Content-Type header field. In case you change the default body
62 with -b, you may want to also change charset accordingly.
63 -d gencancel generates a Date header field in the local time of your
65 news server. Using -d will make use of a UTC date.
66 -f from
68 gencancel uses by default the value of complaints in inn.conf for
69 the From header field. Using this argument permits setting the
70 value you want. The same value will be used for the Approved
71 header field (if generated, when -a is not given).
72 -k Instead of outputting a whole cancel control message, gencancel
74 will just output the body of the Cancel-Key header field with admin
75 hashes.
76 This flag is only available if INN was built with Cancel-Lock
78 support.
79 -L gencancel outputs by default a Cancel-Key header field to
81 authenticate the cancel control message. If -L is used, no Cancel-
82 Key header field is output.
83 This flag is only available if INN was built with Cancel-Lock
85 support.
86 -m gencancel generates by default a random Message-ID and uses it as
88 unique identifier of the cancel control message. If -m is used, no
89 Message-ID header field is output.
90 -n newsgroups
92 gencancel generates by default the same Newsgroups header field as
93 the one present in the original article to cancel. This is done to
94 best ensure that the cancel control message will be relayed to the
95 same news servers as the original message.
96 In case your news server does not (or no longer) locally carry the
98 original article, you will have to give an explicit newsgroup or
99 list of comma-separated newsgroups with this flag, that will be
100 used as the Newsgroups header field of the cancel.
101 -s subject
103 gencancel uses by default "cmsg cancel <message-id>" as the subject
104 of cancel control messages. Using this argument permits setting a
105 different value for the Subject header field. Make sure it is
106 properly MIME-encoded.
107
109 To only retrieve the admin Cancel-Key hashes associated to the given
110 Message-ID:
111 gencancel -k '<mid@news>'
113 If you're using non-ASCII characters in headers, make sure you properly
115 MIME-encode them. For instance, use the "Encode" Perl module:
116 FROM=$(perl -e 'use Encode;
118 print encode("MIME-Q",
119 decode("UTF-8", "Julien ELIE"));')
120 gencancel -f "$FROM <admin@news.server.com>" '<mid@news>'
121 You'll then see in the output a properly MIME-encoded header field:
123 From: =?UTF-8?Q?Julien_=C3=89LIE?= <admin@news.server.com>
125 An example of call with a custom multi-line body:
127 gencancel -b "$(echo -e "Multi\nLine\nBody.")" '<mid@news>'
129 (Use -c to change the default Content-Type charset for the body.)
131 You can then pipe the result into "inews -h -P -D" (meaning inews
133 expects an article with headers, does not add a Sender header field,
134 and writes the result to standard output instead of actually injecting
135 it):
136 gencancel '<mid@news>' | inews -h -P -D
138 If it all looks good, then inject it into the news system (without
140 giving "-D" to inews):
141 gencancel '<mid@news>' | inews -h -P
143 Note that inews sends the message to the server specified in the server
145 parameter in inn.conf.
146
148 Written by Julien Elie for InterNetNews.
149
151 inews(1), inn-secrets.conf(5).
152INN 2.7.1 2023-04-16 GENCANCEL(1)