NAME¶
innfeed.conf - Configuration file for innfeed
DESCRIPTION¶
The configuration file
innfeed.conf in
pathetc is used to control
the
innfeed(8) program. It is a fairly free-format file that consists
of three types of entries:
key:
value,
peer and
group. Comments are from the hash character "#" to the end of
the line.
key:
value entries are a keyword and a value separated by a colon
(which can itself be surrounded by whitespace). For example:
max-connections: 10
A legal
key starts with a letter and contains only letters, digits, and
the "_" and "-" characters. There are 5 different types of
values: integers, floating-point numbers, characters, booleans, and strings.
Integer and floating-point numbers are as to be expected, except that exponents
in floating-point numbers are not supported. A boolean value is either
"true" or "false" (case is not significant). A character
value is a single-quoted character as defined by the C-language. A string
value is any other sequence of characters. If the string needs to contain
whitespace, then it must be quoted with double quotes, and uses the same
format for embedding non-printing characters as normal C-language string.
Peer entries look like:
peer <name> {
# body ...
}
The word "peer" is required. The
<name> is the same as
the site name in INN's
newsfeeds configuration file. The body of a peer
entry contains some number (possibly zero) of
key:
value entries.
Group entries look like:
group <name> {
# body ...
}
The word "group" is required. The
<name> is any string
valid as a key. The body of a group entry contains any number of the three
types of entries. So
key:
value pairs can be defined inside a
group, and peers can be nested inside a group, and other groups can be nested
inside a group.
key:
value entries that are defined outside of all
peer and
group entries are said to be at "global scope". There are
global
key:
value entries that apply to the process as a whole
(for example the location of the backlog file directory), and there are global
key:
value entries that act as defaults for peers. When
innfeed looks for a specific value in a peer entry (for example, the
maximum number of connections to set up), if the value is not defined in the
peer entry, then the enclosing groups are examined for the entry (starting at
the closest enclosing group). If there are no enclosing groups, or the
enclosing groups do not define the
key:
value, then the value at
global scope is used.
A small example could be:
# Global value applied to all peers that have
# no value of their own.
max-connections: 5
# A peer definition. "uunet" is the name used by innd
# in the newsfeeds configuration file.
peer uunet {
ip-name: usenet1.uu.net
}
peer vixie {
ip-name: gw.home.vix.com
max-connections: 10 # Override global value.
}
# A group of two peers which can handle more connections
# than normal.
group fast-sites {
max-connections: 15
# Another peer. The "max-connections" value from the
# "fast-sites" group scope is used. The "ip-name" value
# defaults to the peer's name.
peer data.ramona.vix.com {
}
peer bb.home.vix.com {
max-connections: 20 # He can really cook.
}
}
Given the above configuration file, the defined peers would have the following
values for the
max-connections key:
uunet 5
vixie 10
data.ramona.vix.com 15
bb.home.vix.com 20
innfeed ignores
key:
value pairs it is not interested in.
Some configuration file values can be set via a command-line option, in which
case that setting overrides the settings in the file.
Configuration files can be included in other configuration files via the syntax:
$INCLUDE filename
There is a maximum nesting depth of 10.
For a fuller example configuration file, see the supplied
innfeed.conf.
GLOBAL VALUES¶
The following listing show all the keys that apply to the process as whole.
These are not required (compiled-in defaults are used where needed).
- news-spool
- This key requires a pathname value and defaults to patharticles in
inn.conf. It specifies where the top of the article spool is. This
corresponds to the -a command-line option.
- input-file
- This key requires a pathname value. It specifies the pathname (relative to
the backlog-directory value) that should be read in funnel-file
mode. This corresponds to giving a filename as an argument on the
command-line (i.e. its presence also implies that funnel-file mode should
be used).
The default is unset; innfeed then runs in channel or batch
mode.
- pid-file
- This key requires a pathname value and defaults to innfeed.pid. It
specifies the pathname (relative to pathrun in inn.conf)
where the pid of the innfeed process should be stored. This
corresponds to the -p command-line option.
- debug-level
- This key defines the debug level for the process. Default is 0. A non-zero
number generates a lot of messages to stderr, or to the config-defined
log-file. This corresponds to the -d command-line option.
If a file named innfeed.debug exists in the pathlog directory
(as set in inn.conf), then debug-level is automatically set
to 1. This is a cheap way of avoiding continual reloading of the
newsfeeds file when debugging. Note that debug messages still go to
log-file.
- debug-shrinking
- This key requires a boolean value and defaults to false (the debug file is
allowed to grow without bound). If set to true, this file is truncated
when its size reaches a certain limit. See backlog-limit for more
details.
- initial-sleep
- This key requires a positive integer. The default value is 2. It defines
the number of seconds to wait when innfeed (or a fork) starts,
before beginning to open connections to remote hosts.
- fast-exit
- This key requires a boolean value and defaults to false. If set to true,
when innfeed receives a SIGTERM or SIGQUIT signal, it will close
its listeners as soon as it can, even if it means dropping articles.
- use-mmap
- This key requires a boolean value. It specifies whether mmaping should be
used if innfeed has been built with mmap(2) support. If
article data on disk is not in NNTP-ready format (CR/LF at the end of each
line), then after mmaping, the article is read into memory and fixed up,
so mmaping has no positive effect (and possibly some negative effect
depending on your system), and so in such a case this value should be
"false", which is the default value. This corresponds to the
-M command-line option.
- log-file
- This key requires a pathname value and defaults to innfeed.log. It
specifies where any logging messages that could not be sent via
syslog(3) should go (such as those generated when a positive value
for debug-value is used). This corresponds to the -l
command-line option.
This pathname is relative to pathlog in inn.conf.
- log-time-format
- This key requires a format string suitable for strftime(3). It is
used for messages sent via syslog(3) and to the status-file.
Default value is "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y".
- backlog-directory
- This key requires a pathname value and defaults to innfeed. It
specifies where the current innfeed process should store backlog
files. This corresponds to the -b command-line option.
This pathname is relative to pathspool in inn.conf.
- backlog-highwater
- This key requires a positive integer value and defaults to 5. It specifies
how many articles should be kept on the backlog file queue before starting
to write new entries to disk.
- backlog-ckpt-period
- This key requires a positive integer value and defaults to 30. It
specifies how many seconds elapse between checkpoints of the input backlog
file. Too small a number will mean frequent disk accesses; too large a
number will mean after a crash, innfeed will re-offer more
already-processed articles than necessary.
- backlog-newfile-period
- This key requires a positive integer value and defaults to 600. It
specifies how many seconds elapse before each check for externally
generated backlog files that are to be picked up and processed.
- backlog-rotate-period
- This key requires a positive integer value and defaults to 60. It
specifies how many seconds elapse before innfeed checks for a
manually created backlog file and moves the output backlog file to the
input backlog file.
- dns-retry
- This key requires a positive integer value and defaults to 900. It defines
the number of seconds between attempts to re-lookup host information that
previously failed to be resolved.
- dns-expire
- This key requires a positive integer value and defaults to 86400. It
defines the number of seconds between refreshes of name to address DNS
translation. This is so long-running processes do not get stuck with stale
data, should peer IP addresses change.
- gen-html
- This key requires a boolean value and defaults to false. It specifies
whether the status-file should be HTML-ified.
- status-file
- This key requires a pathname value and defaults to innfeed.status.
An absolute pathname can be used. It specifies the pathname (relative to
pathhttp when gen-html is true; otherwise, pathlog as
set in inn.conf) where the periodic status of the innfeed
process should be stored. This corresponds to the -S command-line
option.
- connection-stats
- This key requires a boolean value and defaults to false. If the value is
true, then whenever the transmission statistics for a peer are logged,
each active connection logs its own statistics. This corresponds to the
-z command-line option.
- host-queue-highwater
- This key requires a positive integer value and defaults to 10. It defines
how many articles will be held internally for a peer before new arrivals
cause article information to be spooled to the backlog file.
- stats-period
- This key requires a positive integer value and defaults to 600. It defines
how many seconds innfeed waits between generating statistics on
transfer rates.
- stats-reset
- This key requires a positive integer value and defaults to 43200. It
defines how many seconds innfeed waits before resetting all
internal transfer counters back to zero (after logging one final time).
This is so a innfeed process running more than a day will generate
"final" stats that will be picked up by logfile processing
scripts.
- initial-reconnect-time
- This key requires a positive integer value and defaults to 30. It defines
how many seconds to first wait before retrying to reconnect after a
connection failure. If the next attempt fails too, then the reconnect time
is approximately doubled until the connection succeeds, or
max-reconnect-time is reached.
- max-reconnect-time
- This key requires an integer value and defaults to 3600. It defines the
maximum number of seconds to wait between attempt to reconnect to a peer.
The initial value for reconnection attempts is defined by
initial-reconnect-time, and it is doubled after each failure, up to
this value.
- stdio-fdmax
- This key requires a non-negative integer value and defaults to 0. If the
value is greater than zero, then whenever a network socket file descriptor
is created and it has a value less than this, the file descriptor
will be dup'ed to bring the value up greater than this. This is to leave
lower numbered file descriptors free for stdio. Certain systems, Sun's in
particular, require this. SunOS 4.1.x usually requires a value of 128 and
Solaris requires a value of 256. The default if this is not specified, is
0.
Special keys for imapfeed¶
The following keys are used with
imapfeed to authenticate to a remote
host. Several parameters may be included at global scope:
- deliver-authname
- The authname is who you want to authenticate as.
- deliver-password
- This is the appropriate password for authname.
- deliver-username
- The username is who you want to "act" as, that is, who is
actually going to be using the server.
- deliver-realm
- In this case, the "realm" is the realm in which the specified
authname is valid. Currently this is only needed by the DIGEST-MD5 SASL
mechanism.
- deliver-rcpt-to
- A printf(3)-style format string for creating the envelope recipient
address. The pattern MUST include a single string specifier which will be
replaced with the newgroup (e.g. "bb+%s"). The default is
"+%s".
- deliver-to-header
- An optional printf(3)-style format string for creating a To: header
field to be prepended to the article. The pattern MUST include a single
string specifier which will be replaced with the newgroup (e.g.
"post+%s@domain"). If not specified, the To: header field will
not be prepended.
GLOBAL PEER DEFAULTS¶
All the
key:
value pairs mentioned in this section can be specified
at global scope. They may also be specified inside a group or peer definition.
Note that when peers are added dynamically (i.e. when
innfeed receives
an article for an unspecified peer), it will add the peer site using the
parameters specified at global scope.
Required keys¶
No keys are currently required. They all have a default value, if not present in
the configuration file.
Optional keys¶
The following keys are optional:
- article-timeout
- This key requires a non-negative integer value. The default value is 600.
If no articles need to be sent to the peer for this many seconds, then the
peer is considered idle and all its active connections are torn down.
- response-timeout
- This key requires a non-negative integer value. The default value is 300.
It defines the maximum amount of time to wait for a response from the peer
after issuing a command.
- initial-connections
- This key requires a non-negative integer value. The default value is 1. It
defines the number of connections to be opened immediately when setting up
a peer binding. A value of 0 means no connections will be created until an
article needs to be sent.
- max-connections
- This key requires a positive integer value. The default value is 2 but may
be increased if needed or for large feeds. It defines the maximum number
of connections to run in parallel to the peer. A value of 0 specifies an
unlimited number of maximum connections. In general, use of an unlimited
number of maximum connections is not recommended. Do not ever set
max-connections to zero with dynamic-method 0 set, as this
will saturate peer hosts with connections.
- close-period
- This key requires a positive integer value and defaults to 86400. It is
the maximum number of seconds a connection should be kept open. Some NNTP
servers do not deal well with connections being held open for long
periods.
- dynamic-method
- This key requires an integer value between 0 and 3. The default value is
3. It controls how connections are opened, up to the maximum specified by
max-connections. In general (and specifically, with
dynamic-method 0), a new connection is opened when the current
number of connections is below max-connections, and an article is
to be sent while no current connections are idle. Without further
restraint (i.e. using dynamic-method 0), in practice this means
that max-connections connections are established while articles are
being sent. Use of other dynamic-method settings imposes a further
limit on the amount of connections opened below that specified by
max-connections. This limit is calculated in different ways,
depending of the value of dynamic-method.
Users should note that adding additional connections is not always
productive -- just because opening twice as many connections
results in a small percentage increase of articles accepted by the remote
peer, this may be at considerable resource cost both locally and at the
remote site, whereas the remote site might well have received the extra
articles sent from another peer a fraction of a second later. Opening
large numbers of connections is considered antisocial.
The meanings of the various settings are:
- 0 (no method)
- Increase of connections up to max-connections is unrestrained.
- 1 (maximize articles per second)
- Connections are increased (up to max-connections) and decreased so
as to maximize the number of articles per second sent, while using the
fewest connections to do this.
- 2 (set target queue length)
- Connections are increased (up to max-connections) and decreased so
as to keep the queue of articles to be sent within the bounds set by
dynamic-backlog-low and dynamic-backlog-high, while using
the minimum resources possible. As the queue will tend to fill if the site
is not keeping up, this method ensures that the maximum number of articles
are offered to the peer while using the minimum number of connections to
achieve this.
- 3 (combination)
- This method uses a combination of methods 1 and 2 above. For sites
accepting a large percentage of articles, method 2 will be used to ensure
these sites are offered as complete a feed as possible. For sites
accepting a small percentage of articles, method 1 is used, to minimize
remote resource usage. For intermediate sites, an appropriate combination
is used.
- dynamic-backlog-low
- This key requires a floating-point value between 0 and 100. It represents
(as a percentage) the low water mark for the host queue. If the host queue
falls below this level while using dynamic-method 2 or 3, and if 2
or more connections are open, innfeed will attempt to drop
connections to the host. An Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) filter is
applied to the value to prevent connection flap (see
dynamic-filter). The default value is 20.0. This value must be
smaller than dynamic-backlog-high.
- dynamic-backlog-high
- This key requires a floating-point value between 0 and 100. It represents
(as a percentage) the high water mark for the host queue. If the host
queue rises above this level while using dynamic-method 2 or 3, and
if less than max-connections are open to the host, innfeed
will attempt to open further connections to the host. An Infinite Impulse
Response (IIR) filter is applied to the value to prevent connection flap
(see dynamic-filter). The default value is 50.0. This value must be
larger than dynamic-backlog-low.
- dynamic-backlog-filter
- This key requires a floating-point value between 0 and 1. It represents
the filter coefficient used by the Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) filter
used to implement dynamic-method 2 and 3. The default value of this
filter is 0.7, giving a time constant of 1/(1-0.7) articles. Higher values
will result in slower response to queue fullness changes; lower values in
faster response.
- max-queue-size
- This key requires a positive integer value. The default value is 5. It
defines the maximum number of articles to process at one time when using
streaming to transmit to a peer. Larger numbers mean more memory consumed
as articles usually get pulled into memory (see the description of
use-mmap).
- streaming
- This key requires a boolean value. Its default value is true. It defines
whether streaming commands are used to transmit articles to the
peers.
- no-check-high
- This key requires a floating-point number which must be in the range [0.0,
100.0]. When running transmitting with the streaming commands,
innfeed attempts an optimization called "no-CHECK mode".
This involves not asking the peer if it wants the article, but just
sending it. This optimization occurs when the percentage of the articles
the peer has accepted gets larger than this number. If this value is set
to 100.0, then this effectively turns off no-CHECK mode, as the percentage
can never get above 100.0. If this value is too small, then the number of
articles the peer rejects will get bigger (and your bandwidth will be
wasted). The default value of 95.0 usually works pretty well.
- no-check-low
- This key requires a floating-point number which must be in the range [0.0,
100.0], and it must be smaller that the value for no-check-high.
When running in no-CHECK mode, as described above, if the percentage of
articles the remote server accepts drops below this number, then the
no-CHECK optimization is turned off until the percentage gets above the
no-check-high value again. If there is small difference between
this and the no-check-high value (less than about 5.0), then
innfeed may frequently go in and out of no-CHECK mode. If the
difference is too big, then it will make it harder to get out of no-CHECK
mode when necessary (wasting bandwidth). Keeping this to between 5.0 and
10.0 less than no-check-high usually works pretty well. The default
value is 90.0.
- no-check-filter
- This is a floating-point value representing the time constant, in
articles, over which the CHECK/no-CHECK calculations are done. The default
value is 50.0, which will implement an Infinite Impulse Response (IIR)
filter of time constant 50. This roughly equates to making a decision
about the mode over the previous 50 articles. A higher number will result
in a slower response to changing percentages of articles accepted; a lower
number will result in a faster response.
- port-number
- This key requires a positive integer value. It defines the TCP/IP port
number to use when connecting to the remote. Usually, port number 119 is
used, which is the default value.
- force-ipv4
- This key requires a boolean value. By default, it is set to false. Setting
it to true is the same as setting bindaddress6 to "none"
and removing bindaddress from "none" if it was set.
- drop-deferred
- This key requires a boolean value. By default, it is set to false. When
set to true, and a peer replies with code 431 or 436 (try again later),
innfeed just drops the article and does not try to re-send it. This
is useful for some peers that keep on deferring articles for a long time
to prevent innfeed from trying to offer the same article over and
over again.
- min-queue-connection
- This key requires a boolean value. By default, it is set to false. When
set to true, innfeed will attempt to use a connection with the
least queue size (or the first empty connection). If this key is set to
true, it is recommended that dynamic-method be set to 0. This
allows for article propagation with the least delay.
- no-backlog
- This key requires a boolean value. It specifies whether spooling should be
enabled (false, the default) or disabled (true). Note that when
no-backlog is set, articles reported as spooled are actually
silently discarded.
- backlog-limit
- This key requires a non-negative integer value. If the number is 0 (the
default), then backlog files are allowed to grow without bound when the
peer is unable to keep up with the article flow. If this number is greater
than 0, then it specifies the size (in bytes) the backlog file should get
truncated to when the backlog file reaches a certain limit. The limit
depends on whether backlog-factor or backlog-limit-highwater
is used.
This parameter also applies to the debug file when debug-shrinking is
set to true, and has the same effect on this file as the one has on
backlog files.
- backlog-factor
- This key requires a floating-point value, which must be larger than 1.0.
It is used in conjunction with the peer key backlog-limit. If
backlog-limit has a value greater than zero, then when the backlog
file gets larger than the value backlog-limit *
backlog-factor, then the backlog file will be truncated to the size
backlog-limit.
For example, if backlog-limit has a value of 1000000, and
backlog-factor has a value of 2.0, then when the backlog file gets
to be larger than 2000000 bytes in size, it will be truncated to 1000000
bytes. The front portion of the file is removed, and the trimming happens
on line boundaries, so the final size may be a bit less than this number.
If backlog-limit-highwater is defined too, then
backlog-factor takes precedence. The default value of
backlog-factor is 1.1.
This parameter also applies to the debug file when debug-shrinking is
set to true, and has the same effect on this file as the one has on
backlog files.
- backlog-limit-highwater
- This key requires a positive integer value that must be larger than the
value for backlog-limit. The default value is 0.
If the size of the backlog file gets larger than this value (in bytes), then
the backlog file will be shrunk down to the size of backlog-limit.
If both backlog-factor and backlog-limit-highwater are
defined, then the value of backlog-factor is used.
This parameter also applies to the debug file when debug-shrinking is
set to true, and has the same effect on this file as the one has on
backlog files.
- backlog-feed-first
- This key requires a boolean value. By default it is set to false. When set
to true, the backlog is fed before new files. This is intended to enforce
in-order delivery, so setting this to true when initial-connections
or max-connections is more than 1 is inconsistent.
- bindaddress
- This key requires a string value. It specifies which outgoing IPv4 address
innfeed should bind the local end of its connection to. It must be
an IPv4 address in dotted-quad format (nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn), "any",
or "none". If not set or set to "any", innfeed
defaults to letting the kernel choose this address. If set to
"none", innfeed will not use IPv4 for outgoing
connections to peers in this scope (i.e. it forces IPv6).
If not set in innfeed.conf, innfeed defaults to the value of
sourceaddress from inn.conf (which by default is
unset).
- bindaddress6
- This key requires a string value. It behaves like bindaddress
except for outgoing IPv6 connections. It must be in numeric IPv6 format
(note that a value containing colons must be enclosed in double quotes),
"any", or "none". If set to "none",
innfeed will not use IPv6 for outgoing connections to peers in this
scope.
If not set in innfeed.conf, innfeed defaults to the value of
sourceaddress6 from inn.conf (which by default is
unset).
- username
- This key requires a string value. If the value is defined, then
innfeed tries to authenticate by AUTHINFO USER and this value used
for user name. password must also be defined, if this key is
defined.
- password
- This key requires a string value. The value is the password used for
AUTHINFO PASS. username must also be defined, if this key is
defined.
PEER VALUES¶
As previously explained, the peer definitions can contain redefinitions of any
of the
key:
value pairs described in the section about global
peer defaults above. There is one
key:
value pair that is
specific to a peer definition.
- ip-name
- This key requires a word value. The word is the host's FQDN, or the dotted
quad IP-address. If this value is not specified, then the name of the peer
in the enclosing peer block is taken to also be its
ip-name.
RELOADING¶
If
innfeed gets a SIGHUP signal, then it will reread the configuration
file. All values at global scope except for
backlog-directory can be
changed (although note that
bindaddress and
bindaddress6 changes
will only affect new connections).
Any new peers are added and any missing peers have their connections closed.
The log file is also reopened.
EXAMPLE¶
For a comprehensive example, see the sample
innfeed.conf distributed with
INN and installed as a starting point.
Here are examples of how to format values:
eg-string: "New\tconfig\tfile\n"
eg-long-string: "A long string that goes
over multiple lines. The
newline is kept in the
string except when quoted
with a backslash \
as here."
eg-simple-string: A-no-quote-string
eg-integer: 10
eg-boolean: true
eg-char: 'a'
eg-ctrl-g: '\007'
HISTORY¶
Written by James Brister <brister@vix.com> for InterNetNews. Converted to
POD by Julien Elie.
Earlier versions of
innfeed (up to 0.10.1) were shipped separately;
innfeed is now part of INN and shares the same version number. Please
note that the
innfeed.conf format has changed dramatically since
version 0.9.3.
$Id: innfeed.conf.pod 9479 2013-06-03 18:12:39Z iulius $
SEE ALSO¶
inn.conf(5),
innfeed(8),
newsfeeds(5).