NAME¶
mailpost - Feed an e-mail message into a newsgroup
SYNOPSIS¶
mailpost [
-hn] [
-a addr] [
-b database]
[
-c wait-time] [
-d distribution] [
-f
addr] [
-m mailing-list] [
-o
output-command] [
-p port] [
-r addr] [
-x header[
:header...]]
newsgroups
DESCRIPTION¶
The
mailpost program reads a properly formatted e-mail message from stdin
and feeds it to
inews for posting to a news server.
newsgroups
is a whitespace-separated list of group names to which to post the article (at
least one newsgroup must be specified).
Before feeding the article to
inews, it checks that the article has not
been seen before, and it changes some headers (cleans up some address headers,
removes X-Trace: and X-Complaints-To:, and puts "X-" in front of
unknown headers).
If the article has been seen before (
mailpost records the Message-ID of
each article it handles), then the article will be dropped with a non-zero
error status. Other errors will cause the article to be mailed to the
newsmaster (selected at configure time and defaulting to "usenet").
Normally,
mailpost is run by
sendmail(8) via an alias entry:
local-mail-wreck-bikes: "|<pathbin in inn.conf>/mailpost
-b /var/tmp -d local local.mail.rec.bicycles.racing"
Instead of
/var/tmp, the mail spool directory can be specified, or any
other directory where the
mailpost process has write access.
OPTIONS¶
- -a addr
- If the -a flag is used, the value given is added to the article as
an Approved: header.
- -b database
- If the -b flag is used, then it defines the location of the
database used to store the Message-IDs of articles sent on. This is to
prevent articles looping around if a news-to-mail gateway sends them back
here. This option may be required if the mailpost process does not
have write access to the news temporary directory. The default value is
pathtmp as set in inn.conf.
- -c wait-time
- The -c flag indicates a length of time to sleep before posting. If
duplicate messages are received in this interval (by any instance of
mailpost using the same database), the article is only posted once,
but with Newsgroups: header modified to crosspost the article to all
indicated groups. The units for wait-time are seconds; a reasonable
value may be anywhere from tens to hundreds of seconds, or even higher,
depending on how long mail can be delayed on its way to your system.
- -d distribution
- If the -d flag is used, the value given is added to the article as
a Distribution: header.
- -f addr
- The -f flag is a synonym for the -r flag.
- -h
- Print usage information and exit.
- -m mailing-list
- If the -m flag is used, the value given is added to the article in
a Mailing-List: header, if such a header doesn't already exist.
- -n
- If the -n flag is used, neither an article is posted nor a mail is
sent in case an error occurs. Everything is written to the standard
output.
- -o output-command
- Specifies the program to which the resulting article processed by
mailpost should be sent. For debugging purpose, "-o cat"
can be used. The default value is "inews -S -h".
- -p port
- Specifies the port on which nnrpd is listening, used for article
posting. If given, -p is passed along to inews.
- -r addr
- A heuristic is used to determine a reasonable value for the Path: header.
The -r flag indicates what to use if no other value can be
determined.
- -x header[:header...]
- A colon-separated list of additional headers which should be treated as
known headers; these headers will be passed through to inews
without having "X-" prepended.
Known headers are:
Approved
Content-*
Date
Distribution
From
Mailing-List
Message-ID
MIME-*
References
Return-Path
Sender
Subject
FILES¶
- pathbin/mailpost
- The Perl script itself used to feed an e-mail message to a newsgroup.
- pathtmp/mailpost-msgid.dir and
pathtmp/mailpost-msgid.pag
- The default database files which record previously seen Message-IDs.
HISTORY¶
Written by Paul Vixie long ago and then hacked up by James Brister for INN
integration.
$Id: mailpost.in 9409 2012-05-28 18:43:20Z iulius $
SEE ALSO¶
active(5),
inews(1),
inn.conf(5),
nnrpd(8),
uwildmat(3).