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PULLNEWS(8)


NAME

  pullnews - a perl script for pulling news from one news machine and feeding
  it to another.


SYNOPSIS

  pullnews [ -c config ] [ -g groups ] [ -h ] [ -p port ] [ -q ] [ -r file ]
  [ -s downstream-server ] [ remote-server ... ]


DESCRIPTION

  pullnews is run as a regular user process. It reads a config file in the
  users home directory (normally called .pullnews) and connects to the
  upstream servers defined in there as a reader client. You may specifiy
  hostnames on the command line to limit the set of remote hosts it connects
  to, but each host must be listed in the .pullnews file.

  For each server it connects to it pulls over articles and feeds them to the
  downstream (local) server via the IHAVE (feeder) NNTP command. This means
  the computer pullnews is run on must have feeding access to the downstream
  news host.

  pullnews is designed for very small sites and is not meant for reverse-
  feeding large feeds.

  You must have Graham Barr's Net::NNTP perl module installed on your system.
  This is part of the libnet bundle and can be found on CPAN or from Graham's
  site http://www.connect.net/gbarr/


OPTIONS

  -c config
       Normally the config file is stored in $HOME/.pullnews for the user
       running the pullnews program. The ``-c'' flag lets you change that.

  -g groups
       The ``-g'' flag specifies a collection of groups to get.	 The value
       must be a single argument with commas between group names.  Each group
       must be defined in the config file.  Only the remote hosts that carry
       those groups will be contacted.

  -h   The ``-h'' flag just prints usage.

  -p port
       The ``-p'' flag can be used to change connecting port to something
       other than 119.

  -q   The ``-q'' flag can be used to make things run more quietly.

  -r file
       The ``-r'' flag tells pullnews to create an rnews-compatible file,
       instead of feeding articles.

  -s downstream-server
       Normally pullnews will feed the articles it retrieves to the news
       server running on ``localhost''. The ``-s'' flag lets you change that.


CONFIG FILE

  The config file for pullnews is a series of sets of lines describing the
  upstream hosts to connect to and the newsgroups to get articles from. A
  host line has no leading white space and just has the name of the host to
  connect to. Group lines come after a host line and have leading white space
  followed by the group name.

  pullnews will update the config file to include the time the group was last
  checked and the highest numbered article successfully retrieved and
  transfered to the downstream server.

  A sample configuration file might look like:

       # Format group date high
       data.pa.vix.com
	       rec.bicycles.racing 908086612 783
	       rec.humor.funny 908086613 18
	       comp.programming.threads
       nnrp.vix.com
	       comp.std.lisp

  The group entries for the two rec.* groups have been updated by an earlier
  run by pullnews, whereas the two comp.* groups were just inserted by the
  user and have not yet been checked.


HISTORY

  pullnews was written by James Brister for INN.  This is revision 1.4, dated
  2002/12/03.


BUGS

  pullnews is very simple and is lacking in more sophisticated features (like
  killing articles based on user-defined conditions) that better pull feeders
  most certainly have. It also doesn't keep or log much detail on articles
  transferred.

  Due to a limitation in the Net::NNTP perl module, one of the functions in
  there is redefined inside the pullnews source. A future release of the
  libnet packages will fix that.


SEE ALSO

  ctlinnd(8), inn.conf(5), innd(8), newsfeeds(5), shlock(1).

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