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fetchnews(8)							  fetchnews(8)

NAME
       fetchnews - fetch news via NNTP

SYNOPSIS
       fetchnews [-q] [-v] ... [-x number] [-l] [-n] [-f] [-P] [-w]

DESCRIPTION
       Leafnode	 is a USENET package intended for small sites, where there are
       few users and little disk space, but where a large number of groups  is
       desired.

       The  design  of leafnode is intended to self-repair after problems, and
       to require no manual maintenance.

       Fetchnews (formerly called "fetch") is the program  which  submits  and
       retrieves new articles to or from the upstream NNTP server.

OPTIONS
       -q     Be quiet. Suppresses some warnings. This flag cancels any previ‐
	      ously encountered -v flags.

       -v     Be verbose.  This flag cancels  any  previously  encountered  -q
	      flags.   A  maximum of four -v can be used (the more v, the more
	      verbose):

       -v     Warn about non-critical errors.

       -vv    Be verbose whenever a group command occurs.

       -vvv   Be verbose whenever an article command occurs.

       -vvvv  For debugging purposes. Don't expect the	additional  output  to
	      make sense.

       -w     Wait  mode.  This	 causes the XOVER update (which runs after the
	      article fetch phase) to run in the foreground. By	 default,  the
	      XOVER update runs in the background, detached from the shell, on
	      systems that offer a working fork(2) call. Helpful for debugging
	      and to avoid terminal clobbering when fetchnews is run manually.

       -x number
	      Go number articles back and try to re-fetch what's missing. This
	      can be useful to pull data from broken servers that have	either
	      overview	and  group data out of synch or create articles out of
	      article number order.

       -l     Don't  use  supplementary	 servers  (-l  is  supposed  to	  mean
	      "local").	 This does speed up the operation quite a bit.

       -n     Do  not  expire  newsgroup  subscriptions.  Technically:	do not
	      unlink files in the interesting.groups directory.

       -f     Erase the active.read file, thus force redownloading  the	 whole
	      active file from all upstream servers. This is usually occurring
	      only very infrequently because it takes a long time.  See	 time‐
	      out_active  in leafnode(8).  DO NOT use this option in cron jobs
	      or otherwise regularly.

       -P     Only post articles that have accumulated in the out.going direc‐
	      tory but do not fetch articles from upstream servers.

EXIT STATUS
       fetchnews  will exit with code 0 if it could connect to all servers and
       encountered no other errors. It exits with code 2 when it was unable to
       connect	to  at	least  one  server,  and it exits with code 1 on other
       errors.

FILES AND CONFIGURATION
       /var/spool/news/leaf.node/active.read
	      is a file to track when the active files have been  successfully
	      downloaded  from	the  upstream  servers the last time. If it is
	      missing, this has the same effect as giving the -f option. It is
	      only  created after the active file of each upstream servers has
	      been downloaded successfully.

       See leafnode(8) for the list of other files affected, and for  informa‐
       tion on configuring fetchnews.

ENVIRONMENT
       LN_SKIP_GROUPS=pattern[,pattern[...]] (since v1.9.53)
	      If  set,	all  groups  that match one of the wildmat(3) patterns
	      will be skipped during the fetch. This can be used  as  a	 quick
	      way  of  skipping	 binary	 groups	 during daytime, for instance,
	      example:

	      env 'LN_SKIP_GROUPS=*binary*,alt.*' /usr/sbin/fetchnews -nq

       LN_LOCK_TIMEOUT
	      This variable is parsed as an unsigned integer value and	deter‐
	      mines how many seconds fetchnews will wait when trying to obtain
	      the lock file from another leafnode program.  0  means  to  wait
	      indefinitely. This variable takes precedence over the configura‐
	      tion file.

       LN_SUPPRESS_DATE
	      (since v1.11.7) If this variable is defined (regardless  of  its
	      value,   including  empty),  leafnode  will  skip	 checking  the
	      upstream server's time by means of the NNTP DATE command.

ALGORITHM
       Here is a brief description of what fetchnews does.

       First, after connecting to the upstream NNTP server, all articles  that
       have  the  u+r  permission (0400) flag set in /var/spool/news/out.going
       are posted using POST.  If a posting fails, that article	 is  moved  to
       /var/spool/news/failed.postings	which an administrator has to clean up
       once in a while.	 Moving a file back  to	 /var/spool/news/out.going  is
       sufficient  to  retry  the  post it. The u+r flag is checked to prevent
       posting an (incomplete) article that leafnode(8) is still receiving  at
       the  same  time.	  If  a	 posting succeeds, the article is removed from
       out.going in order to not post it twice into a moderated newsgroup on a
       different  server  (which  would send multiple copies of the article to
       the moderator).	Note: older fetchnews versions tried to	 post  on  all
       servers first, but failed to do so when one of the servers could not be
       reached. If you need to work around a dodgy  upstream  server  that  is
       fast  but doesn't forward your posts reliably, prohibit posting to this
       server using the nopost server option in the  configuration  file,  see
       leafnode(8).

       Second,	the  upstream server's list of newsgroups (obtained using LIST
       and LIST NEWSGROUPS) is merged into leafnode's (if  timeout_active  has
       expired,	 the  active.read  file	 is  not present or the active file is
       empty) or updated (with NEWGROUPS).

       Third, fetchnews iterates over the list	of  newsgroups,	 performing  a
       GROUP,  an XOVER (if supported) or XHDR Message-ID and a number of HEAD
       and BODY or ARTICLE  commands  for  each	 group	which  has  been  read
       recently.  It  assumes  that for the particular group it is looking at,
       "maxage" was set to the groupexpire or global expire. As a consequence,
       it makes only sense to set maxage lower than or equal to expire.

NOTES
       Fetchnews  does	not  use  NEWNEWS.   NEWNEWS is not used because it is
       often very expensive and therefore also disabled at many sites.

       After some experiments, I decided that it was better to fetch  all  the
       articles	 in  a	group than to optimize away some; users would complain
       too loudly when the optmizer guessed wrongly.

       The only way to control what newsgroups are accessible to  local	 users
       is  to  control	what the upstream server lets fetchnews read, and that
       will not keep out all crossposts (endemic in e.g. the alt.sex  groups).
       If  your	 site is big enough that you need to control newsgroup access,
       consider using a news server which is designed for a big site.

       Fetchnews sets its real and effective uid to  "news"  when  started  as
       root and refuses to run if it cannot get this user ID.

BUGS
       Fetchnews ignores the "Supersedes:" and "Control:" headers.

HISTORY
       Older  versions	of  fetchnews  posted any articles found in out.going.
       Since v1.9.23, fetchnews will only post article files that  have	 their
       user  executable bit set.  Leafnode sets this bit after it has success‐
       fully received a post. This behaviour avoids posting  incomplete	 arti‐
       cles  when leafnode receives a post at the same time fetchnews is post‐
       ing.

AUTHOR
       Written by Arnt Gulbrandsen <agulbra@troll.no>  and  copyright  1995-96
       Troll  Tech  AS,	 Postboks  6133	 Etterstad, 0602 Oslo, Norway, fax +47
       22646949.

       Modified	 by  Cornelius	Krasel	<krasel@wpxx02.toxi.uni-wuerzburg.de>,
       Markus  Enzenberger <enz@cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de> and Randolf Skerka
       <Randolf.Skerka@gmx.de>.	 Copyright  of	the  modifications  1997-1999.
       Modified	 by Matthias Andree <matthias.andree@gmx.de>, copyright of the
       modifications 2001-2004.

SEE ALSO
       leafnode(8), texpire(8), newsq(1), /etc/leafnode/leafnode/filters.exam‐
       ple.

leafnode			    1.11.8			  fetchnews(8)
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