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 If authentication credentials are present for the remote server in the
19 passwd.nntp file in pathetc, then rnews will use them to authenticate.
20 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 at 127.0.0.1, and finally to the server set via server in
26 inn.conf.
27 When sent over UUCP, Usenet articles are typically collected in a
29 single batch to reduce the UUCP overhead. Batches can also be
30 compressed to reduce communication time. If the input to rnews does
31 not begin with the characters "#!", it is taken to be a single news
32 article; otherwise, the first line of the input is interpreted as a
33 batch command.
34 If the batch command is:
36 #! rnews <number>
38 then the next <number> bytes (starting with the next line) are read as
40 a news article. After that article is processed, the next line is
41 again treated as a batch command.
42 If the command is:
44 #! cunbatch
46 then the rest of the input is fed to "gzip -d" to uncompress it, and
48 then the resulting uncompressed output is re-read as if it were the
49 original input to rnews. A compressed batch should therefore start
50 with this line and contain a batch of articles separated by "#! rnews"
51 lines and then compressed with compress(1). (Batches compressed with
52 gzip(1) should instead use "gunbatch" as the batch command; INN just
53 uses gzip rather than compress because it can handle compress-style
54 compression but is more widely available, due to old patent issues,
55 than compress.)
56 Otherwise, if the command is any other word and the -a flag is not
58 given, rnews will try to execute a program with that name, looking for
59 it in the directory pathbin/rnews.libexec. The rest of the batch will
60 be fed to that program's standard input, and the standard output from
61 the program will be treated as if it were the original input to rnews.
62 INN comes with three such standard batch processors:
63 bunbatch
65 It invokes bzip2 and should be used for batches compressed with
66 bzip2.
67 c7unbatch
69 It undoes an ASCII encoding to recover the original binary compressed
70 stream and then decompresses it as explained above.
71 gunbatch
73 It invokes gzip and should be used for batches compressed with gzip.
74
76 -a By default, rnews looks for additional unpackers in the
77 rnews.libexec sub-directory of pathbin (as set in inn.conf). If -a
78 is given, no additional batch processor will be used; only "rnews"
79 and "cunbatch" will be recognized as valid batch commands.
80 -b By default, rnews will log and discard any articles that are
82 rejected by the server or cannot be parsed by rnews for some reason
83 (such as a missing header field). If -b is given, rejected
84 articles will also be backed up in the bad sub-directory of
85 pathincoming (as set in inn.conf).
86 -d If -d is given, rnews will log via syslog the message-ID and the
88 Path header field body of each article rejected as a duplicate by
89 the server.
90 -h host
92 If -h is given, rnews will log the message ID and host via syslog
93 for each article that it offers to the server. This is used in
94 conjunction with a UUCP feed to get a log of the messages received
95 via that feed. This will also be done if the environment variable
96 UU_MACHINE is set, but will only be done if host is not an empty
97 string. (You can therefore turn off logging even if UU_MACHINE
98 will be set by passing the flag "-h ''" to rnews.)
99 -N Normally, if unpacking the input batch fails, it is re-spooled to
101 pathincoming for another attempt later. If the -N flag is given,
102 no such re-spooling is done and rnews will instead exit with status
103 9 if unpacking fails.
104 -P port
106 Use port as the server port to connect to rather than nnrpdpostport
107 (as set in inn.conf). Note that this value is only used if rnews
108 does not connect to the local server (in other words, when -r or -S
109 is given or nnrpdposthost is set).
110 -r server, -S server
112 -r and -S are synonymous. If either is given, articles will be
113 sent to server rather than using the local server, overriding also
114 the setting of nnrpdposthost in inn.conf.
115 -U If the server is not available, both rnews and nnrpd will spool
117 posts to new files in the pathincoming directory (as specified in
118 inn.conf). When rnews is invoked with the -U option, it scans that
119 directory and processes all spooled messages found there whose
120 filenames do not begin with ".", attempting to send them to the
121 server again. It's a good idea to run this periodically out of
122 cron to pick up any articles spooled due to temporary server
123 unavailability.
124 -v Enable verbose mode, with more traces, notably logging the reason
126 why articles are rejected by the server.
127
129 rnews cannot process articles that have embedded null characters in
130 them. (Neither can the rest of INN at present.)
131
133 Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews. Rewritten
134 in POD by Russ Allbery <eagle@eyrie.org>.
135
137 bzip2(1), compress(1), gzip(1), inn.conf(5), innd(8), nnrpd(8),
138 passwd.nntp(5).
139INN 2.7.1 2023-04-16 RNEWS(1)