Changi NNTP Server 1.0
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CHANX.EXE
Command Line Options
Simply call the program without any options to get a usage help:
Usage: chanx [options] host [groups YYMMDD HHMMSS [<dist>]]
options:
-a<user:passwd> authentication
-d<debug-flags> debug switches (all off)
-h<remotehost> remote host to connect (host)
-k<size> stop after <size> kBytes (unlimited)
-l<list-flags> list retrieval flags
-m<mode-flags> operation mode flags
-n<threads> number of concurrent queries (3)
-p<port> port number to connect (nntp)
-r<rnewsprogram> rnews program call (rnews)
-s<spooldir> spool directory (spool)
-t<minutes> stop after <minutes> minutes (unlimited)
-w<seconds> remote connection timeout (600)
-W<seconds> local connection timeout (60)
mode flags: debug flags:
b batch mode f article filtering
o omit datefile update t nntp telegrams
p posting only, no query p posting
q query only, no posting o screen output
r send MODE READER list flags:
s send SLAVE a active file
t type to console d save dropped
w without newnews g new newsgroups
x use xover j distributions
n newsgroup descriptions
u subscriptions
General Command Line Parameters
Note, that you can't use the optional parameters groups, YYMMDD,
HHMMSS and dist in conjunction with option -mw or -mx.
- host
- is the hostname of the remote site. This parameter is
required.
- groups
- is a list of the newsgroups you want to request for new
articles. Separate them with a comma. It's highly recommended
that you use wildcard expressions to
specify the list of newsgroups.
Although the practice is discouraged you may use a full
pathname, in host.last,
pointing to a newsrc file containing the newsgroups you want to retrieve.
This file should contain one newsgroup per line, each followed
by a colon. Chanx will ignore anything following the colon
and it will not modify or update this file in any way.
- YYMMDD HHMMSS
- must specify date and time in GMT, not local time. All
articles which have arrived at the remote site after this time
will be retrieved.
- dist
- will only query articles with the given distribution. This item
is only included for completeness. It may put heavy loads on the
server and substantially increase the transfer time.
Command Line Options
Chanx supports a rich set of option, most of which you'd never
use, and in most environments Chanx will run fine without
specifying any of them. On the other hand, these options offer
some interesting features to optimize news exchange or to solve
the problems which may arise while you try to retrieve
new articles from or upload local posts to your provider's machine.
General Command Line Options
- -a user:passwd
- This option allows Chanx to connect to remote servers protected
with simple AUTHINFO. You must provide your user-ID and your
password separated by a colon.
- -h remotehost
- Normally Chanx will simply connect to the remote server
specified by the host item on the command line. But because
this item is used for other purposes too (like naming the
host.last file, for example),
you may alternatively use this option to specify a different hostname
to connect to. With this option you may even supply a hostname
in the dotted decimal form in case of DNS problems.
- -n threads
- specifies the number of connections, or threads, to be activated
for article retrieval. By default Chanx uses three connections,
which should be sufficient for normal modem connections. This
parameter is ignored in conjunction with option -mw.
- -p port
- specifies a different port number. By default Chanx uses the nntp
entry in etc\services or port 119 if no entry was found.
- -r rnewscall
- overrides the default call to Rnews.
This option is ignored
- -s spooldir
- Specifies the spool directory.
Chanx will check this directory for waiting posts.
- -wseconds
- By default Chanx will wait up to 600 seconds for a response from the
remote server. This option may be used to set a different
timeout.
- -Wseconds
- This option is similiar to option -w, but is used to change
the response timeout for the local server connection, which defaults
to 60 seconds.
- -mb
- (batch mode) will not directly feed retrieved articles into
the standard input channel of Rnews but create a temporary file
named host.batch. This file is automatically fed to Rnews
after all articles had been successfully retrieved.
This option might decrease the connection time while using
more diskspace.
- -mo
- (omit update) will not update
host.last. By default Chanx
updates this file after retrieving the ids of all new articles
from the server.
- -mp
- (post only) disables the retrieval of new articles.
- -mq
- (query only) stops Chanx from posting.
- -mr
- will send MODE READER to the server. This should be used with
INN running on the remote site if it needs to be switched from innd
to nnrpd in order to talk to passive clients.
- -ms
- will send a SLAVE command to the server. Some NNTP servers
might increase the priority for the current session.
- -mt
- (type mode) will not directly store retrieved articles into the
newsbase but print them on the console instead. This might not only
decrease connection time but may also allow further processing.
For example you can create a compressed batch file calling
chanx -mt hostname | gzip > batch.Z
and process this file later using
rnews -Fbatch.Z
- -mw
- This option should be used if the remote server neither supports
NEWNEWS nor XOVER. Articles are queried by article number. The
chapter about usage examples provides
additional informations of available download methods.
- -mx
- If the remote server doesn't support NEWNEWS or if the admin
of the remote machine asks you to reduce the load put on his
machine while downloading news, then try this option.
Articles are queried by overview lines and article number. See
the usage examples for a further
discussion of available download methods.
Newsserver implementations like Changi use many files
containing different types of lists. One of the central
lists is stored in the active file,
which may grow very large.
If you intend to retrieve many or even all newsgroups available
at the remote site, then creating and updating these lists with a
text editor easily becomes a big task. Fortunately, Chanx is able
to retrieve some of them from the remote site.
Another interesting feature is use of a filter file to reject
all articles and let Chanx write header information into
a file named host.drop.
Later, another program may transfer selected articles to a file named
host.iwant.
If Chanx detects an existing iwant file, it will first try
to retrieve the articles listed in this file before querying
new articles. The bad news is that you have to write your
own program to transfer selected lines from
host.drop
to host.iwant.
- -la
- queries an active file
from the remote host and stores it in
host.active.
- -ld
- saves all filtered articles in
host.drop.
- -lg
- queries a list of newly created newsgroups at the remote site
and stores it in host.newgroups. If this file exists then
Chanx will append the new groups to this file.
- -lj
- queries a distribution list and stores it in
host.distributions.
- -ln
- queries a description list
of all available newsgroups and stores it in host.newsgroups.
This extension to the NNTP protocol may not be available on all servers.
- -lu
- queries a subscription list and stores it in
host.subscriptions. This extension to the NNTP protocol
may not be available on all servers.
Limiting News Amount or Connection Time
The intent of these options is to limit the risk of unattended
program operation. Without them Chanx will usually
keep connected until all articles have been successfully
retrieved. Due to the layout of the NNTP protocol and the
programs' internal design you can't use these options to
define regular connection times or amount of exchanged news.
If any of these limits is reached, Chanx will abort and will not
update host.last
or host.watermark.
If you plan to run Chanx unattended, you must implement additional
safety checks. Never trust a single one on its own.
- -k size
- sets maximum number of kilobytes of articles to retrieve from the
remote host. Chanx will check for this limit before
retrieving each article.
- -t minutes
- sets maximum connection time in minutes. Note that this function
will only work as long as the remote host is sending data. Chanx
will check for this limit before retrieving each article.
Situations in which the server on the remote host stops responding
while keeping the connection alive must be handled somewhere else
(slip/modem timeout, for example).
Debugging Options
While previous versions created a logfile, this release
uses a local
syslog daemon for greater flexibility.
A syslog daemon is not included in this distribution, but is
part of IBM's TCP/IP base product and, in a more enhanced version
(ported by Jochen Friedrich), available as freeware.
- -df
- logs article filtering. Chanx will report problems with
the filter file as well as filtering results of each article
header processed.
- -do
- sends log messages to the console. Use this option if you
didn't run a local
syslog daemon. To redirect this output to
a file, append
2>mylog
at the end of the command line.
- -dp
- forces Chanx to log all actions while trying to find and send
local posts to the remote host.
- -dt
- logs all NNTP telegrams sent to and received from the remote host.
This option is very useful if you experience problems after
Chanx successfully connected to the remote host.
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