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 totalsize, 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 $