pullnews(8)
NAME
pullnews - a perl script for pulling news from one news
machine and feeding it to another.
SYNOPSIS
pullnews [ -c config ] [ -g groups ] [ -h ] [ -p port ] [
-q ] [ -r file ] [ -s downstream-server ] [ remote-server
... ]
DESCRIPTION
pullnews is run as a regular user process. It reads a con
fig file in the users home directory (normally called
.pullnews) and connects to the upstream servers defined in
there as a reader client. You may specifiy hostnames on
the command line to limit the set of remote hosts it con
nects to, but each host must be listed in the .pullnews
file.
For each server it connects to it pulls over articles and
feeds them to the downstream (local) server via the IHAVE
(feeder) NNTP command. This means the computer pullnews is
run on must have feeding access to the downstream news
host.
pullnews is designed for very small sites and is not meant
for reverse-feeding large feeds.
You must have Graham Barr's Net::NNTP perl module
installed on your system. This is part of the libnet bun
dle and can be found on CPAN or from Graham's site
http://www.connect.net/gbarr/
OPTIONS
- -c config
- Normally the config file is stored in $HOME/.pull
news for the user running the pullnews program. The ``-c'' flag lets you change that. - -g groups
- The ``-g'' flag specifies a collection of groups to
get. The value must be a single argument with com
mas between group names. Each group must be
defined in the config file. Only the remote hosts
that carry those groups will be contacted. - -h The ``-h'' flag just prints usage.
- -p port
- The ``-p'' flag can be used to change connecting
port to something other than 119. - -q The ``-q'' flag can be used to make things run more
- quietly.
- -r file
- The ``-r'' flag tells pullnews to create an rnewscompatible file, instead of feeding articles.
- -s downstream-server
- Normally pullnews will feed the articles it
retrieves to the news server running on ``local
host''. The ``-s'' flag lets you change that.
CONFIG FILE
The config file for pullnews is a series of sets of lines
describing the upstream hosts to connect to and the news
groups to get articles from. A host line has no leading
white space and just has the name of the host to connect
to. Group lines come after a host line and have leading
white space followed by the group name.
pullnews will update the config file to include the time
the group was last checked and the highest numbered arti
cle successfully retrieved and transfered to the down
stream server.
- A sample configuration file might look like:
- # Format group date high
data.pa.vix.comrec.bicycles.racing 908086612 783
rec.humor.funny 908086613 18
comp.programming.threads - nnrp.vix.com
comp.std.lisp
- The group entries for the two rec.* groups have been
updated by an earlier run by pullnews, whereas the two comp.* groups were just inserted by the user and have not
yet been checked.
HISTORY
pullnews was written by James Brister for INN. This is
revision 1.4, dated 2002/12/03.
BUGS
pullnews is very simple and is lacking in more sophisti
cated features (like killing articles based on userdefined conditions) that better pull feeders most cer
tainly have. It also doesn't keep or log much detail on
articles transferred.
Due to a limitation in the Net::NNTP perl module, one of
the functions in there is redefined inside the pullnews
source. A future release of the libnet packages will fix
that.