1RNEWS(1) General Commands Manual RNEWS(1)
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6 rnews - receive news from a UUCP connection
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9 rnews [ -h host ] [ -N ] [ -P port ] [ -r remote ] [ -S remote ] [ -U ]
10 [ -v ] [ input ]
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13 Rnews reads messages typically queued by a UUCP newsfeed and sends them
14 to the InterNetNews server (either ``localhost'', or the value defined
15 by the variable <nnrpdposthost in inn.conf>.
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17 The message is read from the specified input file, or standard input if
18 no input is named.
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20 When sent over UUCP, Usenet articles are typically joined in a single
21 batch to reduce the UUCP overhead. Batches can also be compressed, to
22 reduce the communication time. If a message does not start with a num‐
23 ber sign (``#'') and an exclamation point, then the entire input is
24 taken as a single news article. If it does start with with those two
25 characters, then the first line is read and interpreted as a batch com‐
26 mand.
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28 If the command is ``#! rnews nnn'' where nnn is a number, then the next
29 nnn bytes (starting with the next line) are read as a news article.
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31 If the command is ``#! cunbatch'' then the rest of input is fed to the
32 compress(1) program with the ``-d'' flag to uncompress it, and the out‐
33 put of this pipe is read as rnews's input. This is for historical com‐
34 patibility — there is no program named cunbatch. A compressed batch
35 will start with a ``#! cunbatch'' line, then contain a series of arti‐
36 cles separated by ``#! rnews nnn'' lines. If <DO_RNEWSPROGS in
37 include/config.h> is defined and the command is any other word, then
38 rnews will try to execute a program with that name in the directory
39 <pathbin in inn.conf>/bin/rnews.libexec.
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41 The batch will be fed into the program's standard input, and the stan‐
42 dard output will be read back as input into rnews. If
43 <DO_RNEWS_SAVE_BAD in include/config.h> is defined and rnews detects
44 any problems with an article such as a missing header, or an unintelli‐
45 gible reply from the server, it will save a copy of the article in the
46 <pathincoming in inn.conf>/bad directory.
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49 -h If the ``-h'' flag is given, then rnews will log the Message-ID
50 and host via syslog(3) for each article offered to the server.
51 Logging will only be done if the value is not an empty string.
52 If ``-h'' is not set, the environment variable <_ENV_UUCPHOST in
53 include/paths.h> (typically $UU_MACHINE) will be examined for a
54 similar string.
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56 -N Normally, if unpacking the input fails it is re-spooled to
57 <pathincoming in inn.conf> for another attempt later. If the
58 ``-N'' flag is used then no such re-spooling is done and rnews
59 exits with status value ``9'' to indicate this.
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61 -P If the ``-P'' flag is used, then the articles will be sent to
62 the specified port on the remote host.
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64 -r If the ``-r'' flag is used, then the articles will be sent to
65 the named remote host instead of the default host.
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67 -S ``-S'' flag is equivalent to ``-r'' flag.
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69 -U If the server is not available, the message is spooled into a
70 new file created in the <pathincoming in inn.conf> directory.
71 The ``-U'' flag may be used to send all spooled messages to the
72 server once it becomes available again, and can be invoked regu‐
73 larly by cron(8).
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75 -v If the ``-v'' flag is used, it will print a notice of all errors
76 on the standard error, naming the input file (if known) and
77 printing the first few characters of the input. Errors are
78 always logged through syslog(3).
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81 Rnews cannot process articles that have embedded ``\0'' characters in
82 them.
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85 Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews. This is
86 revision 5909, dated 2002-12-03.
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89 inn.conf(5), innd(8).
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93 RNEWS(1)