.\" =()<.ds a @@>()= .ds a /var/spool/news .\" =()<.ds b @@>()= .ds b /usr/local/newsbin .\" =()<.ds c @@>()= .ds c /usr/local/lib/news .\" =()<.ds m @@>()= .ds m usenet .TH RNEWS 8 "27 Jan 1992" .BY "C News" .SH NAME rnews, cunbatch \- accept and spool news input .br newsspool, newsrun, c7decode \- news input spooler and processing .br newsrunning \- control news-processing daemon .SH SYNOPSIS .B rnews .br .B cunbatch .br .B \*b/input/newsspool [ .B \-g grade ] [ .B \-i ] [ file ... ] .br .B \*b/input/newsrun [ grades ] .br .B \*b/input/c7decode .br .B \*b/input/newsrunning [\fBon\fR|\fBoff\fR] .SH DESCRIPTION .I Rnews accepts news from standard input and spools it up for processing, space permitting. If space is persistently too short, .I rnews looks for the file .IR \*c/rnews.stall ; if it is present, .I rnews waits patiently for more space to appear, while if it is absent, .I rnews discards the news and reports this. .PP .PP .I Cunbatch is a historical synonym for .IR rnews ; there is no difference in what they do. .PP .I Newsspool is the actual spooling program. It copies the input \fIfile\fR(s) (standard input default) to a file in the input-spooling directory \fI\*a/in.coming\fR, stripping off any `\fB#!\ cunbatch\fR' or `\fB#!\ c7unbatch\fR' header as it does so. The filename is based on the current time, plus a suffix classifying the file by type (compressed, \fIc7encode\fRd, or plain text), plus a possible prefix denoting the one-digit numeric \fIgrade\fR (if the .B \-g option is given; .I rnews does not use this option). If invoked with the .B \-i option, when finished .I newsspool attempts to start .I newsrun to process the new news immediately. .I Rnews invokes it this way if and only if the file .I \*c/rnews.immed exists. .PP .I Newsrun should be run periodically (e.g. by \fIcron\fR(8)) to process spooled news. .I Newsrunning can be used to turn \fInewsrun\fR's processing off and on if it is desired to avoid major news processing during certain hours. `\fBnewsrunning off\fR' instructs any currently-running \fInewsrun\fR to stop as soon as possible, and prevents later ones from running. (This is a slight oversimplification; see the discussion of .I grades below.) `\fBnewsrunning on\fR' removes the inhibition (but does not actually start a new \fInewsrun\fR). Without an argument, \fInewsrunning\fR reports the current status: ``off'' or ``on''. .PP .I Newsrun checks for the \fIstop\fR file that \fInewsrunning\ off\fR creates, verifies that there is enough disk space for processing, and then starts processing spooled news. News is processed in order by \fIgrade\fR: if the name of the spooled file starts with a digit followed by a period, the digit is the file's \fIgrade\fR. Files without a grade are considered to have a grade just after grade 9. Lower-numbered grades are processed first, with processing within a grade in chronological order. .PP If .I newsrun is invoked with a .I grades argument, that specifies the grades to be processed. A .I grades argument can be a single grade (`1'), a list (`123'), or a range (`1-5'). In the absence of the argument, .IR newsrun 's default is all grades if there is no \fIstop\fR file present, and just grade 0 if there is a \fIstop\fR file. If a \fIstop\fR file appears during processing, .I newsrun will stop processing all but grade 0 and will exit when there is no grade-0 news left. .PP Each batch is run through \fIc7decode\fR (if necessary), de\fIcompress\fRed (if necessary), and then fed to \fIrelaynews\fR. (Files that lack a classification suffix, typically because they arrived by some means other than \fInewsspool\fR, are tried first as compressed and then as plain text.) If \fIrelaynews\fR fails, \fInewsrun\fR attempts to save the spooled batch in the \fIbad\fR subdirectory for human inspection. .PP .I C7decode passes standard input to standard output, decoding a complex and bizarre encoding of 8-bit data as printable ASCII characters. .SH FILES .nf (All in \fI\*a/in.coming\fR) .sp .ta 2.5c 000000000 (etc.) unclassified ungraded spooled news 000000000.Z ungraded compressed spooled news 000000000.t ungraded plain-text spooled news 000000000.7 ungraded compressed \fIc7encode\fRd spooled news 1.000000000.Z grade 1 compressed spooled news, etc. stop \fInewsrun\fR disable file bad directory for failed news .SH SEE ALSO compress(1), newsbatch(8), newsmail(8), relaynews(8) .SH DIAGNOSTICS Complaints are mailed to \fB\*m\fR if something goes wrong. .SH HISTORY Part of C News. Written at University of Toronto by Henry Spencer. .SH BUGS \fIC7decode\fR should be part of the underlying transport mechanism. It hasn't been tested very well in the C News environment. \fIBdecode\fR (see \fInewsmail\fR(8)) is probably better for most uses. .PP .I Relaynews is a bit too enthusiastic about declaring batches bad, so things may end up in \fIbad\fR for no terribly good reason. Actually, it's rare for the contents of \fIbad\fR to be very interesting. .PP The grading mechanism relies slightly on collating sequence, and in particular on `.' collating before the digits.