snmail(8) [debian man page]
snmail,v0.3.8(8) System Manager's Manual snmail,v0.3.8(8) NAME
snmail - mail-to-news filter SYNOPSIS
snmail [-sP] [listname [prefix]] DESCRIPTION
snmail reads a single email message on standard input, and writes the converted message to standard output. This output is suitable for feeding to snstore. snmail does these conversions: If the first line is a UUCP From_ line, it is silently discarded; a Newsgroups: line is added with the value of prefixlistname (prefix concatenated with listname), and other existing Newsgroups: lines are removed; and a Path: line is created from all Received: lines, which are removed; all header lines are unfolded; if no message ID exists, one is created; message IDs in all Refer- ences: lines and In-Reply-To: lines are collected into a single References: line; all lines are rewritten to end in CRLF; and a lone . on a line is written at the end of the message. snmail will accept and pass on messages with invalid header fields. snmail is meant to be run from a .forward or the /etc/aliases file (if you're using sendmail or similar) or from a .qmail file (if you're using qmail). snmail may write status or error messages to standard error. OPTIONS
-s Pipe output to snstore directly, do not write to standard output. This is so the exit status is not lost in a shell pipeline. If you use this flag, it is also a good idea to also use -c (tell snstore to check if article already exists). Other options snmail also accepts options intended for snstore, viz. -c, -v, and -n, and these are passed on uninterpreted. ARGUMENTS
prefix is the prefix of the newsgroup; if not specified, it defaults to local. (note the trailing .). prefix may not begin with a . (dot) but it may be empty. listname completes the newsgroup name; if not specified, it is the local part of the address in the Return-Path: line if it exists and isn't empty; otherwise it is the local part of the messages' first From:. So if the message originated from the list <linux-lem- mings@vger.rutgers.edu>, then the default newsgroup becomes local.linux-lemmings. listname may be empty if prefix isn't. You may want to have a file /var/spool/sn/prefixlistname/.nopost to deny posting from all and sundry, to prevent the mailing list newsgroup from being contaminated. prefix and listname may contain uppercase characters; these are converted to lower case. USAGE
There are two ways of forwarding mail to the sn news spool: directly from a user's mail address; or forwarded to a central address and then invoking snmail. The central concern here is permissions; while anyone can run snmail, not everyone may store mail in the spool. Mail setups vary a lot, so basically you're on your own here. ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
SNROOT If this is set and is not empty, the value is used in place of /var/spool/sn, the default news spool directory. PATH If -s was specified, determines where to look for snstore, before looking in /usr/sbin. EXIT STATUS
snmail exits 0 if the message was successfully converted and written, or if the message ID already exists in the ID database and the mes- sage was not stored or converted. snmail exits with 1 on usage error, 2 on operational error, 3 if the mail message wasn't in the proper format. N.B. Harold Tay snmail,v0.3.8(8)
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snfetch,v0.3.8(8) System Manager's Manual snfetch,v0.3.8(8) NAME
snfetch - fetch articles. SYNOPSIS
snfetch [-r] [-t timeout] [-c depth] group [serial [max]] DESCRIPTION
snfetch expects to read NNTP from file descriptor 6, and write NNTP to file descriptor 7, which descriptors must have already been open. Articles retrieved are written to descriptor 1. Each article displayed is separated from the next by a dot on a line by itself. These articles are NNTP safe, in the sense that double-dot unquoting is not done, and all lines end in CR-LF. snfetch expects to begin it's NNTP speech by giving the GROUP command. The upstream server's greeting must have already been read some other way. Likewise, when snfetch is done, it will not send a QUIT command. The output is suitable for feeding to snstore. snfetch always checks the article ID of the prospective article before retrieving it. If the ID already exists in the ID database, the article will not be retrieved. Note that this does not guarantee that all articles retrieved will be unique. snfetch does not guarantee to leave the NNTP conversation in a decent state (there might be more data to read, but snfetch aborted part way). You will need to be root or own /var/spool/sn in order to run this program. It is not safe to direct the output of several snfetches to the same pipe descriptor, but a file descriptor is all right. OPTIONS
-t timeout snfetch will wait only timeout seconds (default 180) for data before giving up, if the server doesn't respond. -r Output in news batch format instead. All articles will take the #! rnews form only, even if there is just one article, all lines end in bare linefeed, and dot-unquoting is performed. -c depth Employ a command pipeline of depth depth. NNTP command pipelining is not officially sanctioned, so by default no pipeline is used. However, a pipeline with a depth greater than 0 will substantally reduce transaction latency if the server accepts it. A respectable value for depth might be between 1 and 5. ARGUMENTS
snfetch takes the name of a single newsgroup on its command line. If serial is given, this is taken to be the first article number on group on the server to fetch. If max is specified, this is taken to be the maximum number of articles to fetch. The first article retrieved may be after serial if max would be violated. If max is not specified, there is no limit. ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
SNROOT If this is set and is not empty, the value is used in place of /var/spool/sn, the default news spool directory. FILES
/var/spool/sn/newsgroup/.serial If serial is not specified, the starting serial number is taken from the file /var/spool/sn/newsgroup/.serial. This defaults to 0 if the file can't be read. /var/spool/sn/newsgroup/.serial.tmp If snfetch exits with success (0), the new serial is written into this file. The original file /var/spool/sn/newsgroup/.serial is readonly by snfetch. /var/spool/sn/newsgroup/.max If max is not specified on the command line, max is read from this file. If the file cannot be read or does not exist, there is no limit. EXIT CODES
snfetch exits 1 on usage error, 2 on system failure, 3 on protocol error, 4 on read timeout, and 0 on success. SEE ALSO
snstore (8), snget (8) N.B. Harold Tay snfetch,v0.3.8(8)