NAME¶
batcher - Article batching for InterNetNews
SYNOPSIS¶
batcher [
-rv] [
-a articles] [
-A
total-articles] [
-b size] [
-B total-size]
[
-i string] [
-N batches] [
-p
process] [
-s separator]
host [
input]
DESCRIPTION¶
batcher reads a list of files and prepares news batches for the specified
host. It is generally used to prepare UUCP feeds, but the resulting batches
can be used by any application that uses
rnews(8) to inject the
articles. It is normally invoked by a script run out of cron that uses
shlock to lock the host, followed by
ctlinnd to flush the batch
file. See
send-uucp(8) for a front-end for
batcher.
batcher reads the file
input, or standard input if no file is
given. If
input is a relative file name, it is assumed to be in
pathoutgoing as set in
inn.conf. Blank lines and lines starting
with a number sign ("#") are ignored. All other lines in the input
should consist of one or two fields separated by a single space. The first
field is the storage API token of an article. The second field, if present,
specifies the size of the article in bytes.
By default, batches are written to standard output (which isn't very useful if
more than one batch is output), but see the
-p option.
OPTIONS¶
- -a articles
- This flag limits the number of articles included in each
batch. The default is no limit. A new batch will be started when either
the total bytes or the number of articles written exceeds the specified
limits.
- -A total-articles
- Limits the total number of articles written for all
batches. As soon as the total number of articles written to batches
reaches or exceeds total-articles, all additional articles in the
input will be deferred. The default is no limit.
- -b size
- This flag sets the size limit for each batch; as soon as at
least this much data has been written out, a new batch will be started.
The default size is 60 KB. Using "-b 0" will allow
unlimited batch sizes.
- -B total-size
- Limits the total number of bytes written for all batches.
As soon as the total bytes written to batches reaches or exceeds
total-size, all additional articles in the input will be deferred.
The default is no limit.
- -i string
- A batch starts with an identifying line to specify the
unpacking method to be used on the receiving end. When this flag is used,
string, followed by a newline, will be output at the start of each
batch. The default is to have no initial string (under the assumption that
either the processor specified with the -p flag or some other later
process will add the appropriate line).
- -N batches
- Limits the total number of batches written. As soon as the
number of batches written reaches or exceeds batches, all
additional articles in the input will be deferred. The default is no
limit.
- -p process
- By default, batches are written to standard output, which
is not useful when more than one output batch is created. If this option
is given, each batch will instead be fed via a pipe to the shell command
process. The process argument must be an sprintf(3)
format string, which may have a single %s parameter that will be replaced
with the host name.
A common value is:
( echo '#! gunbatch' ; exec gzip -c ) | uux - -r -z %s!rnews
which generates gzip-compressed batches and feeds them to uux.
- -r
- By default, batcher reports errors to
pathlog/errlog. To suppress this redirection and report errors to
standard error, use the -r flag.
- -s separator
- Each article in a batch starts with a separator line that
indicates the size of the article. separator must be an
sprintf(3) string, which may have a single %ld in the string that
will be replaced with the size of the article. If the separator is not
empty, a newline will also be appended to it when it is added to the
beginning of each article.
The default separator is:
#! rnews %ld
and this should rarely be changed.
- -v
- Upon exit, batcher reports statistics via syslog.
With this flag, the statistics will also be printed to standard
output.
EXIT STATUS¶
If the input is exhausted and all batches are created successfully,
batcher will exit with a zero status.
If any of the limits specified with
-A,
-B, or
-N flags are
reached, or if there is an error in writing a batch,
batcher will try
to spool the remaining input by copying it to a file as follows:
- •
- If there was no input filename, the remaining input will be
copied to pathoutgoing/host.
- •
- If an input filename was given, the remaining input will be
copied to a temporary file named by appending ".bch" to the end
of input (and qualified by adding pathoutgoing if
input was not a fully qualified path). If this happens
successfully, batcher will then try to rename this temporary file
to input (thus replacing input with a copy of itself with
all of lines for the successfully batched articles removed).
Upon receipt of an interrupt or termination signal,
batcher will finish
batching the current article, close the batch, and then rewrite the batch file
as described above.
HISTORY¶
Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews. Rewritten by
Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> in POD.
$Id: batcher.pod 8774 2009-11-15 09:23:27Z iulius $
SEE ALSO¶
ctlinnd(8),
inn.conf(5),
newsfeeds(5),
rnews(8),
send-uucp(8),
shlock(1).