NAME¶
testhost - test the status of an NNTP news server
SYNOPSIS¶
testhost hostname [
-a|-n date time
|-o ] [
-M ] [
-s|-S filename ] [
-e|-E filename ] [
-N port_number ] [
-U
userid ] [
-P password ] [
-Q ] [
-l phrase_file ] [
-T timeout ] [
-d ] [
-q ] [
-z ]
OPTIONS¶
-a Get the active list from hostname
-d
This option tells testhost get the descriptions of the newsgroups on the remote
server by sending the 'list newsgroups' command. The remote server may or may
not support this command.
-e | -E filename
These options will send all error messages (normally displayed on stderr), to an
alternate file. The lower case version, -e, will send the error messages to
the compiled-in default defined in suck_config.h. The default is suck.errlog.
The upper case version, -E, requires the filename parameter. All error
messages will then be sent to this file.
-l phrase_file
This option tells testhost to load in an alternate phrase file, instead of using
the built-in messages. This allows you to have testhost print phrases in
another language, or to allow you to customize the messages without
re-building. See the "FOREIGN LANGUAGE PHRASES" in suck.1 for more
details.
-n date time
Get the newgroups created on the host since the date and time specified. The
date must be in YYMMDD format and the time must be in HHMMSS format.
-N port_number
This option will tell testhost to use an alternate NNRP port number when
connecting to the host, instead of the default, 119.
-q
This option tells testhost to not display the connection and announcement
messages, rather only display the results of the actual command run.
-s | -S filename
These options will send all status messages (normally displayed on stdout), to
an alternate file. The lower case version, -s, will send the status messages
to the compiled-in default defined in suck_config.h. The default is /dev/null,
so no status messages will be displayed. The upper case version, -S, requires
the filename parameter. All status messages will then be sent to this file.
-T
This option overrides the compiled-in TIMEOUT value. This is how long testhost
waits for data from the remote host before timing out and aborting.
-U userid
-P password
These two options let you specify a userid and password, if your NNTP server
requires them.
-Q
This option tells testhost to use the environment variable NNTP_USER &
NNTP_PASS to specify a userid and password, if your NNTP server requires them.
This option is provided so that the userid & password can't be seen with
the ps command, a potential security problem.
-z
This options tells testhost to use SSL to talk to the remote server, if testhost
was compiled with SSL.
DESCRIPTION¶
Testhost will query a NNTP news server, specified by
hostname.
The hostname may optionally include the port number in the form
Host:Port.Iftheportnumberisincluded,theportnumberspecified
by the -N option will be ignored.
The default action is to issue the
help command to the server, to see
what software it is running and what commands it accepts.
If the
-a option is used, testhost will display the server's active
history list. If the
-n date time option is used, testhost will display
all new groups created on the server since the date and time specified. If the
-o option is used, then testhost will display the overview format,
which is what the XOVER command returns.
If the
-M option is used, the command will be preceded with the
"mode reader" command, which might be needed by some servers.
EXIT VALUES¶
0 on success, -1 on failure.
SEE ALSO¶
suck(1),
rpost(1), lpost(1).