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1994-01-04
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NEWSBATCH(8) NEWSBATCH(8)
¢1mNAME¢22m
sendbatches, batchsplit - news batching to other sites
batcher, batchih, batchsm - news¡batch preparation
comp, nocomp, compcun, compc7, compb - news¡batch compres¡
sion
c7encode, bencode - compressed¡news¡batch encoding
viauux, viauuxz, viauuxcun, viauuxl - news¡batch transmis¡
sion via uucp
viamail, viaemail, viapmail - news¡batch transmission via
mail
viainews, viarsh - news¡batch transmission by misc. means
¢1mSYNOPSIS¢22m
¢1m/usr/lib/newsbin/batch/sendbatches¢22m [ site ... ]
¢1m.../batchsplit¢22m batchsize
¢1m.../batcher¢22m listfile
¢1m.../batchih¢22m listfile
¢1m.../batchsm¢22m listfile
¢1m.../comp¢22m
¢1m.../nocomp¢22m
¢1m.../compcun¢22m
¢1m.../compc7¢22m
¢1m.../compb¢22m
¢1m.../c7encode¢22m
¢1m.../bencode¢22m [ file ]
¢1m.../viauux¢22m site
¢1m.../viauuxz¢22m site
¢1m.../viauuxcun¢22m site
¢1m.../viauuxl¢22m group
¢1m.../viamail¢22m site
¢1m.../viaemail¢22m site
¢1m.../viapmail¢22m site
¢1m.../viainews¢22m site
¢1m.../viarsh¢22m site
¢1mDESCRIPTION¢22m
¢4mSendbatches¢24m administers batched transmission of news to
other sites. It should be run periodically, under userid
¢4mnews¢24m, by ¢4mcron¢24m(8) or similar means. It prepares and sends
batches of news, subject to restrictions on available
space and length of outbound queues.
Each site that can have batches sent to it needs a ¢4msite¢24m
directory under ¢4m/usr/spool/news/out.going¢24m. If ¢4msendbatches¢24m
is invoked with specific ¢4msite¢24ms given, it considers batch¡
ing for those sites, only, in that order. By default,
¢4msendbatches¢24m consults the ¢4mbatchparms¢24m file (see below) to
determine what to do: If there is a ¢1m/default/¢22m entry in
¢4mbatchparms¢24m, ¢4msendbatches¢24m will consider batching for all
sites that have directories in ¢4m/usr/spool/news/out.going¢24m,
in oldest¡first order by modification time of the direc¡
tory. If there is no ¢1m/default/¢22m entry, ¢4msendbatches¢24m consid¡
ers batching for those sites named in ¢4mbatchparms¢24m, in the
7 Nov 1990 1
NEWSBATCH(8) NEWSBATCH(8)
order named.
To use the batcher, names of files to be sent to a spe¡
cific site should be appended to a ¢4mtogo¢24m file in its ¢4msite¢24m
directory. The batcher expects the lines in ¢4mtogo¢24m to have
two fields, a filename (as a full pathname, or relative to
¢4m/usr/spool/news¢24m) of an article and its size in bytes. A
missing size field is arbitrarily assumed to be a default
average.
¢4mSendbatches¢24m uses a number of auxiliary programs to do the
real work. The search path it uses to find them includes,
in order, the ¢4msite¢24m directory for the site in question,
¢4m/usr/lib/news/bin¢24m, and ¢4m/usr/lib/newsbin/batch¢24m. This per¡
mits per¡site and per¡news¡database overrides of the
default behaviors. ¢4mSendbatches¢24m provides all these pro¡
grams with environment variables ¢1mNEWSSITE¢22m, containing the
name of the site that batches are being prepared for, and
¢1mNEWSSITEDIR¢22m, containing the full pathname of the ¢4msite¢24m
directory, in case these are useful in customization.
The names of most of the auxiliary programs, and some
other parameters, are taken from the file
¢4m/usr/lib/news/batchparms¢24m, an ASCII text file. Empty lines
and lines starting with `#' are ignored. Other lines
specify the behavior for sites, one line per site. A site
line is six fields, separated by white space. The first
field is the site name; a line whose site name is
¢1m/default/¢22m specifies what parameters should be used for
sites not explicitly mentioned. (The presence or absence
of such a line also influences the behavior of ¢4msendbatches¢24m
when invoked without arguments; see above.) The second
field is the size of batches to be prepared (before com¡
pression), in bytes. The third field is the maximum
length of the output queue for transmission to that site.
The fourth, fifth, and sixth fields are the names of the
programs to be used to build, compress, and transmit
(respectively) batches to that site.
For each site being considered for batches, ¢4msendbatches¢24m
first determines whether there are in fact any articles to
be batched. Assuming there are, ¢4msendbatches¢24m then finds
the ¢4mbatchparms¢24m line for that site and invokes ¢4mqueuelen¢24m
(see ¢4mnewsaux¢24m(8)) to find out the size of the outbound
queue for the site. ¢4mSendbatches¢24m limits the number of
batches prepared to the minimum of the limits implied by
queue lengths and available space.
¢4mSendbatches¢24m uses ¢4mbatchsplit¢24m as necessary to slice chunks
out of the ¢4mtogo¢24m file, each chunk containing the ¢4mtogo¢24m lines
for a batch limited to the specified size. Exception: a
single article bigger than the specified size will still
go out as one batch.
7 Nov 1990 2
NEWSBATCH(8) NEWSBATCH(8)
Each chunk is then processed through a batch preparer
(typically ¢4mbatcher¢24m), which assembles the articles into a
batch, a batch compressor (typically ¢4mcompcun¢24m), which per¡
forms compression and/or any other auxiliary processing
needed, and a batch transmitter (typically ¢4mviauux¢24m), which
sends the batch on its way (e.g. enqueues it for transmis¡
sion). The preparer is run with ¢4m/usr/spool/news¢24m as the
current directory, so non¡absolute pathnames in the chunk
are valid filenames; the others are run in the ¢4msite¢24m direc¡
tory for easier access to site¡specific customization
files.
Batch preparers in the standard distribution are:
batcher normal batching
batchih ¢4mihave¢24m part of old ihave/sendme (not to be
confused with NNTP)
batchsm ¢4msendme¢24m part of ihave/sendme
¢4mBatchih¢24m and ¢4mbatchsm¢24m have to map from the phony ``site
name'' given in their ¢4mbatchparms¢24m line to the name of the
site they should actually send to; they do this by strip¡
ping off the last `.' and everything that follows (usually
`.ihave' or `.sendme' respectively, but on machines which
limit the size of filenames these may have to be short¡
ened).
Batch compressors in the standard distribution are:
comp ordinary compression
compcun compression plus the silly B¡news¡
compatible `#! cunbatch' header
nocomp pass data straight through, no compression
compc7 compression plus 7¡bit encoding using
¢4mc7encode¢24m
compb compression plus very conservative 6¡bit
encoding using ¢4mbencode¢24m
Batch transmitters in the standard distribution are:
viauux normal transmission via UUCP
viauuxz like ¢4mviauux¢24m except with ¢1m-z¢22m option given
to ¢4muux¢24m (for old UUCPs where don't¡report¡
result¡on¡zero¡status is not default)
viauuxcun like ¢4mviauux¢24m except it invokes ¢4mcunbatch¢24m
rather than ¢4mrnews¢24m at the other end (for
7 Nov 1990 3
NEWSBATCH(8) NEWSBATCH(8)
some very old news sites)
viauuxl multicast transmission using the ¢1m-l¢22m
option of ¢4muux¢24m (not found on all systems)
to send the same batch to all systems
listed in the file
`/usr/lib/news/sites.¢4mgroup¢24m'
viamail mail the batch to ¢4msite¢1m¢24m!rnews¢22m
viaemail mail the batch to ¢4msite¢1m¢24m!enews¢22m
viapmail mail the batch to ¢4msite¢1m¢24m!rnews¢22m, attempting
to protect an unencoded batch against the
vagaries of mailers
viainews feed the batch back to ¢4minews¢24m, ignoring
the ¢4msite¢24m argument (normally useful only
for ihave/sendme)
viarsh use ¢4mrsh¢24m to run ¢4mrnews¢24m on the ¢4msite¢24m via Eth¡
ernet, Internet, etc. (the directory
containing ¢4mrnews¢24m must be in the default
PATH on ¢4msite¢24m)
¢4mC7encode¢24m encodes 8¡bit data from standard input into a
7¡bit form optimized for transmission by uucp `f' proto¡
col. The encoding is complex and bizarre.
¢4mBencode¢24m takes 8¡bit data from the named source file (the
default is standard input) and encodes it using only the
ASCII characters ``A'' - ``Z'', ``a'' - ``z'', ``0'' -
``9'', ``+'', and ``¡''. The ASCII characters blank, new¡
line, and ``/'' also appear in the encoded file, but do
not represent encoded bits. The encoded file is termi¡
nated with a byte count and cyclic redundancy check for
detecting corrupted files. This ought to suffice to get
data through almost any network.
¢4mSendbatches¢24m logs some information about sites with back¡
logs in ¢4m/usr/lib/news/batchlog¢24m (see also ¢4mnewsdaily¢24m(8)).
This is intended to help detection and diagnosis of flow
problems.
¢1mFILES¢22m
/usr/lib/news/LOCKbatch lock for ¢4msendbatches¢24m
/usr/lib/news/LOCK overall news lock (used by ¢4mbatchsplit¢24m)
/usr/lib/news/L.* lock temporaries
/usr/spool/news/out.going/* batch directories
/usr/lib/news/batchparms parameter file
/usr/lib/news/sites.* ¢4mviauuxl¢24m multicast lists
also see text
7 Nov 1990 4
NEWSBATCH(8) NEWSBATCH(8)
¢1mSEE¢22m ¢1mALSO¢22m
inews(1), compress(1), uux(1), relaynews(8), rnews(8)
¢1mDIAGNOSTICS¢22m
Complaints, if any, from ¢4msendbatches¢24m and its auxiliaries
are mailed to `usenet'.
¢1mHISTORY¢22m
Written at University of Toronto as part of the C News
project. A number of the ideas came from Chris Lewis, who
was then with Motorola. ¢4mBencode¢24m written at University of
Waterloo by Reg Quinton and Ken Lalonde.
¢1mBUGS¢22m
¢4mBatchsplit¢24m does not count the `#! rnews ¢4mnnnn¢24m' headers
inside batches when computing batch lengths.
Ihave/sendme processing is a bit of a kludge; in particu¡
lar, applying ¢4mbatchsplit¢24m to a file full of article IDs
just happens to work okay.
¢4mSendbatches¢24m estimates available space without considering
the effects of compression; this is usually too conserva¡
tive.
¢4mViapmail¢24m is obsolescent; ¢4mviaemail¢24m with a batch encoded
with ¢4mbencode¢24m is vastly superior.
Queue¡length limiting does not work for ¢4mviauuxl¢24m because
¢4mqueuelen¢24m (see ¢4mnewsaux¢24m(8)) does not know about multicast
groups. Also, ¢4mviauuxl¢24m has not been tested well.
¢4mViarsh¢24m does not incorporate a spooling subsystem, so a
slow site stalls the entire batching system and a non¡
responding site loses news. It is not recommended for
bulk transmission or where high reliability is essential.
7 Nov 1990 5