1INEWS(1) InterNetNews Documentation INEWS(1)
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6 inews - Post a Usenet article to the local news server
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9 inews [-ADhNORSVW] [-acdeFfnortwx value] [-p port] [file]
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12 inews reads a Usenet news article, perhaps with headers, from file or
13 standard input if no file is given. It adds some headers and performs
14 some consistency checks. If the article does not meet those checks,
15 the article is rejected. If it passes the checks, inews sends the
16 article to the local news server as specified in inn.conf.
17 By default, if a file named .signature exists in the home directory of
19 the posting user, it is appended to the post, preceeded by a line that
20 contains only "-- ". Signatures are not allowed to be more than four
21 lines long.
22 Cancel messages can only be posted with inews if the sender of the can‐
24 cel message matches the sender of the original message being cancelled.
25 The same check is also applied to Supersedes. Sender in this case
26 means the contents of the Sender header if present, otherwise the From
27 header.
28 Control messages other than cancel messages are only allowed if inews
30 is being run by the news user or by a user in the news group and if the
31 control message is recognized. If the article contains a Distribution
32 header with a distribution that matches one of the bad distribution
33 patterns in inn/options.h (anything containing a period by default),
34 the message will be rejected. The message will also be rejected if
35 checkincludedtext is true in inn.conf, it contains more quoted text
36 than original text, and it is over 40 lines long.
37 If not provided, the Path header of an article is constructed as fol‐
39 lows: The basic Path header will be "not-for-mail". If pathhost is
40 specified in inn.conf, it will be added to the beginning Path. Other‐
41 wise, if server is specified, the full domain of the local host will be
42 added to the beginning of the Path. Then, if -x was given, its value
43 will be added to the beginning of the Path.
44 If posting fails, a copy of the failed post will be saved in a file
46 named dead.article in the home directory of the user running inews.
47 inews exits with a non-zero status if posting failed or with a zero
48 status if posting was successful.
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51 Most of the options to inews take a single value and set the corre‐
52 sponding header in the message that is posted. If the value is more
53 than one word or contains any shell metacharacters, it must be quoted
54 to protect it from the shell. Here are all the options that set header
55 fields and the corresponding header:
56 -a Approved
58 -c Control
59 -d Distribution
60 -e Expires
61 -F References
62 -f From
63 -n Newsgroups
64 -o Organization
65 -r Reply-To
66 -t Subject
67 -w Followup-To
68 -x Path prefix
69 The -x argument will be added to the beginning of the normal Path
71 header; it will not replace it.
72 -A, -V, -W
74 Accepted for compatibility with C News. These options have no
75 affect.
76 -D, -N
78 Perform the consistency checks and add headers where appropriate,
79 but then print the article to standard output rather than sending
80 it to the server. -N is accepted as as synonym for compatibility
81 with C News.
82 -h Normally, this flag should always be given. It indicates that the
84 article consists of headers, a blank line, and then the message
85 body. If it is omitted, the input is taken to be just the body of
86 the message, and any desired headers have to be specified with com‐
87 mand-line options as described above.
88 -O By default, an Organization header will be added if none is present
90 in the article. To prevent adding the default (from organization
91 in inn.conf), use this flag.
92 -p port
94 Connect to the specified port on the server rather than to the
95 default (port 119).
96 -R Reject all control messages.
98 -S Do not attempt to append ~/.signature to the message, even if it
100 exists.
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103 If the NNTP server requests authentication, inews will try to read
104 passwd.nntp to get the username and password to use and will therefore
105 need read access to that file. This is typically done by making that
106 file group-readable and adding all users who should be able to use
107 inews to post to that server to the appropriate group.
108 inews used to do even more than it does now, and all of the remaining
110 checks that are not dependent on the user running inews should probably
111 be removed in favor of letting the news server handle them.
112 Since INN's inews uses inn.conf and some other corners of an INN
114 installation, it's not very appropriate as a general stand-alone inews
115 program for general use on a system that's not running a news server.
116 Other, more suitable versions of inews are available as part of various
117 Unix news clients or by themselves.
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120 Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews. Rewritten
121 in POD by Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>.
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124 inn.conf(5), rnews(1)
125INN 2.4.2 2004-12-24 INEWS(1)