PULLNEWS(1) InterNetNews Documentation PULLNEWS(1)NAMEpullnews - Pull news from one news server and feed it to another
SYNOPSISpullnews [-hq] [-c config] [-g groups] [-p port] [-r file] [-s to-
server] [<from-server> ...]
REQUIREMENTS
The Net::NNTP module must be installed. This module is available as
part of the libnet distribution and comes with recent versions of Perl.
For older versions of Perl, you can download it from
<http://www.cpan.org/>.
DESCRIPTIONpullnews reads a config file in the running user's home directory (nor‐
mally called ~/.pullnews) and connects to the upstream servers given
there as a reader client. By default, it connects to all servers
listed in the configuration file, but you can limit pullnews to spe‐
cific servers by listing them on the command line. For each server it
connects to, it pulls over articles and feeds them to the destination
server via the IHAVE command. This means that the system pullnews is
run on must have feeding access to the destination news server.
pullnews is designed for very small sites that don't want to bother
setting up traditional peering and is not meant for handling large
feeds.
OPTIONS-c config
Normally, the config file is stored in ~/.pullnews for the user
running pullnews. If -c is given, config will be used as the con‐
fig file instead. This is useful if you're running pullnews as a
system user on an automated basis out of cron rather than as an
individual user.
-g groups
Specifies a collection of groups to get. groups is a list of news‐
groups separated by commas (only commas, no spaces). Each group
must be defined in the config file, and only the remote hosts that
carry those groups will be contacted. Note that this is a simple
list of groups, not a wildmat expression, and wildcards are not
supported.
-h Print a usage message and exit.
-p port
Connect to the destination news server on a port other than the
default of 119. This option does not change the port used to con‐
nect to the remote news servers.
-q Print out less status information while running.
-r file
Rather than feeding the downloaded articles to a local server,
instead create a batch file that can later be fed to a server using
rnews. See rnews(1) for more information about the batch file for‐
mat.
-s to-server
Normally, pullnews will feed the articles it retrieves to the news
server running on localhost. To connect to a different host, spec‐
ify a server with the -s flag.
CONFIG FILE
The config file for pullnews is divided into blocks, one block for each
remote server to connect to. A block begins with the host line, which
must have no leading whitespace and contains just the hostname of the
remote server. Following this line should be one or more newsgroup
lines which start with whitespace followed by the name of a newsgroup
to retrieve. Only one newsgroup should be listed on each line.
pullnews will update the config file to include the time the group was
last checked and the highest numbered article successfully retrieved
and transferred to the destination server. It uses this data to avoid
doing duplicate work the next time it runs.
The full syntax is:
<host> [<username> <password>]
<group> [<time> <high>]
<group> [<time> <high>]
where the <host> line must not have leading whitespace and the <group>
lines must. Note that you may optionally specify a username and pass‐
word for basic authentication to the remote server if necessary.
A typical configuration file would be:
# Format group date high
data.pa.vix.com
rec.bicycles.racing 908086612 783
rec.humor.funny 908086613 18
comp.programming.threads
nnrp.vix.com pull sekret
comp.std.lisp
Note that an earlier run of pullnews has filled in details about the
last article downloads from the two rec.* groups. The two comp.*
groups were just added by the user and have not yet been checked.
The nnrp.vix.com server requires authentication, and pullnews will use
the username "pull" and the password "sekret".
BUGSpullnews is very simple and is lacking in more sophisticated features
(like killing articles based on user-defined conditions) that better
pull feeders most certainly have. It also doesn't keep or log much
detail on articles transferred.
HISTORYpullnews was written by James Brister for INN. The documentation was
rewritten in POD by Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>.
SEE ALSOincoming.conf(5)INN 2.4.3 2005-12-11 PULLNEWS(1)
