MAILPOST(8)						    InterNetNews Documentation						       MAILPOST(8)

NAME

       mailpost - Feed an e-mail message into a newsgroup

SYNOPSIS

       mailpost [-hn] [-a addr] [-b database] [-c wait-time] [-d distribution] [-f addr] [-m mailing-list] [-o output-command] [-p port] [-r addr]
       [-x header[:header...]] newsgroups

DESCRIPTION

       The mailpost program reads a properly formatted e-mail message from stdin and feeds it to inews for posting to a news server.  newsgroups
       is a whitespace-separated list of group names to which to post the article (at least one newsgroup must be specified).

       Before feeding the article to inews, it checks that the article has not been seen before, and it changes some headers (cleans up some
       address headers, removes X-Trace: and X-Complaints-To:, and puts "X-" in front of unknown headers).

       If the article has been seen before (mailpost records the Message-ID of each article it handles), then the article will be dropped with a
       non-zero error status.  Other errors will cause the article to be mailed to the newsmaster (selected at configure time and defaulting to
       "usenet").

       Normally, mailpost is run by sendmail(8) via an alias entry:

	   local-mail-wreck-bikes: "|<pathbin in inn.conf>/mailpost
	       -b /var/tmp -d local local.mail.rec.bicycles.racing"

       Instead of /var/tmp, the mail spool directory can be specified, or any other directory where the mailpost process has write access.

OPTIONS

       -a addr
	   If the -a flag is used, the value given is added to the article as an Approved: header.

       -b database
	   If the -b flag is used, then it defines the location of the database used to store the Message-IDs of articles sent on.  This is to
	   prevent articles looping around if a news-to-mail gateway sends them back here.  This option may be required if the mailpost process
	   does not have write access to the news temporary directory.	The default value is pathtmp as set in inn.conf.

       -c wait-time
	   The -c flag indicates a length of time to sleep before posting.  If duplicate messages are received in this interval (by any instance
	   of mailpost using the same database), the article is only posted once, but with Newsgroups: header modified to crosspost the article to
	   all indicated groups.  The units for wait-time are seconds; a reasonable value may be anywhere from tens to hundreds of seconds, or
	   even higher, depending on how long mail can be delayed on its way to your system.

       -d distribution
	   If the -d flag is used, the value given is added to the article as a Distribution: header.

       -f addr
	   The -f flag is a synonym for the -r flag.

       -h  Print usage information and exit.

       -m mailing-list
	   If the -m flag is used, the value given is added to the article in a Mailing-List: header, if such a header doesn't already exist.

       -n  If the -n flag is used, neither an article is posted nor a mail is sent in case an error occurs.  Everything is written to the standard
	   output.

       -o output-command
	   Specifies the program to which the resulting article processed by mailpost should be sent.  For debugging purpose, "-o cat" can be
	   used.  The default value is "inews -S -h".

       -p port
	   Specifies the port on which nnrpd is listening, used for article posting.  If given, -p is passed along to inews.

       -r addr
	   A heuristic is used to determine a reasonable value for the Path: header.  The -r flag indicates what to use if no other value can be
	   determined.

       -x header[:header...]
	   A colon-separated list of additional headers which should be treated as known headers; these headers will be passed through to inews
	   without having "X-" prepended.

	   Known headers are:

	       Approved
	       Content-*
	       Date
	       Distribution
	       From
	       Mailing-List
	       Message-ID
	       MIME-*
	       References
	       Return-Path
	       Sender
	       Subject

FILES

       pathbin/mailpost
	   The Perl script itself used to feed an e-mail message to a newsgroup.

       pathtmp/mailpost-msgid.dir and pathtmp/mailpost-msgid.pag
	   The default database files which record previously seen Message-IDs.

HISTORY

       Written by Paul Vixie long ago and then hacked up by James Brister for INN integration.

       $Id: mailpost.in 9025 2010-03-21 16:49:41Z iulius $

SEE ALSO

       active(5), inews(1), inn.conf(5), nnrpd(8), uwildmat(3).

INN 2.5.2							    2010-03-21							       MAILPOST(8)