BATCHER(8)						    InterNetNews Documentation							BATCHER(8)

NAME

       batcher - Article batching for InterNetNews

SYNOPSIS

       batcher [-rv] [-a articles] [-A total-articles] [-b size] [-B total-size] [-i string] [-N batches] [-p process] [-s separator] host [input]

DESCRIPTION

       batcher reads a list of files and prepares news batches for the specified host.	It is generally used to prepare UUCP feeds, but the
       resulting batches can be used by any application that uses rnews(8) to inject the articles.  It is normally invoked by a script run out of
       cron that uses shlock to lock the host, followed by ctlinnd to flush the batch file.  See send-uucp(8) for a front-end for batcher.

       batcher reads the file input, or standard input if no file is given.  If input is a relative file name, it is assumed to be in pathoutgoing
       as set in inn.conf.  Blank lines and lines starting with a number sign ("#") are ignored.  All other lines in the input should consist of
       one or two fields separated by a single space.  The first field is the storage API token of an article.	The second field, if present,
       specifies the size of the article in bytes.

       By default, batches are written to standard output (which isn't very useful if more than one batch is output), but see the -p option.

OPTIONS

       -a articles
	   This flag limits the number of articles included in each batch.  The default is no limit.  A new batch will be started when either the
	   total bytes or the number of articles written exceeds the specified limits.

       -A total-articles
	   Limits the total number of articles written for all batches.  As soon as the total number of articles written to batches reaches or
	   exceeds total-articles, all additional articles in the input will be deferred.  The default is no limit.

       -b size
	   This flag sets the size limit for each batch; as soon as at least this much data has been written out, a new batch will be started.
	   The default size is 60 KB.  Using "-b 0" will allow unlimited batch sizes.

       -B total-size
	   Limits the total number of bytes written for all batches.  As soon as the total bytes written to batches reaches or exceeds total-size,
	   all additional articles in the input will be deferred.  The default is no limit.

       -i string
	   A batch starts with an identifying line to specify the unpacking method to be used on the receiving end.  When this flag is used,
	   string, followed by a newline, will be output at the start of each batch.  The default is to have no initial string (under the
	   assumption that either the processor specified with the -p flag or some other later process will add the appropriate line).

       -N batches
	   Limits the total number of batches written.	As soon as the number of batches written reaches or exceeds batches, all additional
	   articles in the input will be deferred.  The default is no limit.

       -p process
	   By default, batches are written to standard output, which is not useful when more than one output batch is created.	If this option is
	   given, each batch will instead be fed via a pipe to the shell command process.  The process argument must be an sprintf(3) format
	   string, which may have a single %s parameter that will be replaced with the host name.

	   A common value is:

	       ( echo '#! gunbatch' ; exec gzip -c ) | uux - -r -z %s!rnews

	   which generates gzip-compressed batches and feeds them to uux.

       -r  By default, batcher reports errors to pathlog/errlog.  To suppress this redirection and report errors to standard error, use the -r
	   flag.

       -s separator
	   Each article in a batch starts with a separator line that indicates the size of the article.  separator must be an sprintf(3) string,
	   which may have a single %ld in the string that will be replaced with the size of the article.  If the separator is not empty, a newline
	   will also be appended to it when it is added to the beginning of each article.

	   The default separator is:

	       #! rnews %ld

	   and this should rarely be changed.

       -v  Upon exit, batcher reports statistics via syslog.  With this flag, the statistics will also be printed to standard output.

EXIT STATUS

       If the input is exhausted and all batches are created successfully, batcher will exit with a zero status.

       If any of the limits specified with -A, -B, or -N flags are reached, or if there is an error in writing a batch, batcher will try to spool
       the remaining input by copying it to a file as follows:

       o If there was no input filename, the remaining input will be copied to pathoutgoing/host.

       o If an input filename was given, the remaining input will be copied to a temporary file named by appending ".bch" to the end of input (and
	 qualified by adding pathoutgoing if input was not a fully qualified path).  If this happens successfully, batcher will then try to rename
	 this temporary file to input (thus replacing input with a copy of itself with all of lines for the successfully batched articles
	 removed).

       Upon receipt of an interrupt or termination signal, batcher will finish batching the current article, close the batch, and then rewrite the
       batch file as described above.

HISTORY

       Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews.  Rewritten by Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> in POD.

       $Id: batcher.pod 8774 2009-11-15 09:23:27Z iulius $

SEE ALSO

       ctlinnd(8), inn.conf(5), newsfeeds(5), rnews(8), send-uucp(8), shlock(1).

INN 2.5.2							    2009-11-15								BATCHER(8)