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pullnews

NAME

pullnews - Pull news from one news server and feed it to another

SYNOPSIS

pullnews [-hq] [-c config] [-g groups] [-p port] [-r file] [-s to-server] [<from-server> ...]

REQUIREMENTS

The Net::NNTP module must be installed. This module is available as part of the libnet distribution and comes with recent versions of Perl. For older versions of Perl, you can download it from <http://www.cpan.org/>.

DESCRIPTION

pullnews reads a config file in the running user's home directory (normally called ~/.pullnews) and connects to the upstream servers given there as a reader client. By default, it connects to all servers listed in the configuration file, but you can limit pullnews to specific servers by listing them on the command line. For each server it connects to, it pulls over articles and feeds them to the destination server via the IHAVE command. This means that the system pullnews is run on must have feeding access to the destination news server.

pullnews is designed for very small sites that don't want to bother setting up traditional peering and is not meant for handling large feeds.

OPTIONS

-c config

Normally, the config file is stored in ~/.pullnews for the user running pullnews. If -c is given, config will be used as the config file instead. This is useful if you're running pullnews as a system user on an automated basis out of cron rather than as an individual user.

-g groups

Specifies a collection of groups to get. groups is a list of newsgroups separated by commas (only commas, no spaces). Each group must be defined in the config file, and only the remote hosts that carry those groups will be contacted. Note that this is a simple list of groups, not a wildmat expression, and wildcards are not supported.

-h

Print a usage message and exit.

-p port

Connect to the destination news server on a port other than the default of 119. This option does not change the port used to connect to the remote news servers.

-q

Print out less status information while running.

-r file

Rather than feeding the downloaded articles to a local server, instead create a batch file that can later be fed to a server using rnews. See rnews(1) for more information about the batch file format.

-s to-server

Normally, pullnews will feed the articles it retrieves to the news server running on localhost. To connect to a different host, specify a server with the -s flag.

CONFIG FILE

The config file for pullnews is divided into blocks, one block for each remote server to connect to. A block begins with the host line, which must have no leading whitespace and contains just the hostname of the remote server. Following this line should be one or more newsgroup lines which start with whitespace followed by the name of a newsgroup to retrieve. Only one newsgroup should be listed on each line.

pullnews will update the config file to include the time the group was last checked and the highest numbered article successfully retrieved and transferred to the destination server. It uses this data to avoid doing duplicate work the next time it runs.

The full syntax is:

     <host> [<username> <password>]
             <group> [<time> <high>]
             <group> [<time> <high>]
 
 

where the <host> line must not have leading whitespace and the <group> lines must. Note that you may optionally specify a username and password for basic authentication to the remote server if necessary.

A typical configuration file would be:

     # Format group date high
     data.pa.vix.com
             rec.bicycles.racing 908086612 783
             rec.humor.funny 908086613 18
             comp.programming.threads
     nnrp.vix.com pull sekret
             comp.std.lisp
 
 

Note that an earlier run of pullnews has filled in details about the last article downloads from the two rec.* groups. The two comp.* groups were just added by the user and have not yet been checked.

The nnrp.vix.com server requires authentication, and pullnews will use the username "pull" and the password "sekret".

BUGS

pullnews is very simple and is lacking in more sophisticated features (like killing articles based on user-defined conditions) that better pull feeders most certainly have. It also doesn't keep or log much detail on articles transferred.

HISTORY

pullnews was written by James Brister for INN. The documentation was rewritten in POD by Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>.

SEE ALSO

incoming.conf(5)