NAME¶

DESCRIPTION¶

The file consists of a series of lines; blank lines and lines beginning with a number sign (``#'') are ignored. All other lines consist of four fields separated by a colon:

The first field is the name of the message for which this line is valid. It should be either the name of the control message, or the word ``all'' to mean that it is valid for all messages.

The second field is a shell-style pattern that matches the email address of the person posting the message. (The poster's address is first converted to lowercase.) The matching is done using the shell's case statement; see sh (1) for details.

If the control message is ``newgroup'' or ``rmgroup'' then the third field specifies the shell-style pattern that must match the group being created or removed. If the control message is of a different type, then this field is ignored.

The fourth field specifies what action to take if this line is selected for the message. The following actions are understood:

doit

The action requested by the control message should be performed. In most cases the control script will also send mail to usenet.

doifarg

If the control message has an argument, this is treated as a ``doit'' action. If no argument was given, it is treated as a ``mail'' entry. This is used in ``sendsys'' entries script so that a site can request its own newsfeeds(5) entry by posting a ``sendsys mysite'' article. On the other hand, sendsys ``bombs'' ask that the entire newsfeeds file be sent to a forged reply-to address; by using ``doifarg'' such messages will not be processed automatically.

doit=file

The action is performed, but a log entry is written to the specified log file, file. If file is the word ``mail'' then the record is mailed. A null string is equivalent to /dev/null. A pathname that starts with a slash is taken as the absolute filename to use as the log. All other pathnames are written to /var/log/news/file.log. The log is written by writelog (see newslog(8)).

drop

No action is taken; the message is ignored.

log

A one-line log notice is sent to standard error. Innd normally directs this to the file /var/log/news/errlog.

log=file

A log entry is written to the specified log file, file, which is interpreted as described above.

mail

A mail message is sent to the news administrator.

Lines are matched in order; the last match found in the file is the one that is used. For example, with the following three lines:

newgroup:*:*:drop
newgroup:tale@*.uu.net:comp.*|misc.*|news.*|rec.*|sci.*|soc.*|talk.*:doit
newgroup:kre@munnari.oz.au:aus.*:mail

HISTORY¶

SEE ALSO¶