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1995-09-04
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SLURP(1) SLURP(1)
NAME
slurp - retrieve netnews articles from a remote NNTP
server
SYNOPSIS
slurp [ -g newsgroups/distributions ] [ -t time ] [ -a
username/password ] [ -d ] [ -i ] [ -l ] [ -r ] [ -w ]
hostname[ /sublist ][ :timefile ]
DESCRIPTION
Slurp is an advanced passive NNTP client for UNIX. It will
connect to a remote NNTP server and retrieve articles in a
specified set of Usenet newsgroups that have arrived after
a particular time (typically the last time it was invoked)
for processing by your local news system.
OPTIONS
-g newsgroups/distributions
If specified then overrides any newsgroups and dis-
tributions specification for hostname in the
slurp.sys file.
-t time
Retrieve articles that have arrived at the server
after time rather than using the time taken from
slurp.<hostname>. This is in the standard NNTP
time format of 'YYMMDD HHMMSS' GMT. For example,
midnight GMT on the 1st of December 1992 will be
'921201 000000'. Note that you will need to use
quotes around the time and remember that the time
is in GMT, not the local or server time.
-a username/password
If specified then the username and password combi-
nation will be sent to the server as part of the
simple authorisation protocol when the connection
is first made.
-d Enable debugging. This diverts reporting to stderr
instead of syslog and turns on extra debugging out-
put.
-i Normally if an error occurs while fetching articles
from the server, the remaining message IDs to be
fetched are written to slurp.<hostname> so that
they may be retrieved in the next session without
having to restart the NEWNEWS at the same point.
With this option selected, no message IDs will be
read from slurp.<hostname> and in the event of an
error occurring, slurp.<hostname> will not be
updated.
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SLURP(1) SLURP(1)
-l Local time is used to set the start time in
slurp.<hostname> for the next news retrieval,
rather than setting the start time through a call
to the tcp time service at the remote server.
-r A 'MODE READER' command is sent to the remote
server. This is used when connecting with an INN
site which needs to be switched from innd to nnrpd
so the NEWNEWS command can be issued.
-w The time for the next news retrieval is not written
to slurp.<hostname>.
hostname
The hostname of the remote NNTP server to connect
to. This must be specified.
[/sublist]
If this is specified, then the entry in slurp.sys
which contains /sublist after the hostname will be
used. This lets you take different groups from the
same server at different times.
[:timefile]
Use this to specify an alternate filename to use
for the file containing the time for the next
NEWNEWS at a particular host. Normally slurp will
use the hostname, but this can cause problems on
file systems with short filenames.
CONFIGURATION FILES
There are two configuration files used by slurp.
slurp.sys
Entries in slurp.sys take the form
host-
name/sublist:groups/distributions:flags:username/password
This format should be familar to people who have used the
C News sys file. Entries for a particular host can be con-
tinued on more than one line by using a '\' at the end of
the line. e.g.
hostname:group1,group2,\
group3,group4,group5
Slurp is even more picky about the presence of whitespace
than C News. It can only appear in comments. Comments
begin with a '#' and continue to the end of the line.
Using distributions is not recommended - they're only
really included for completeness. Under current NNTP
V1.08 20 August 1993 2
SLURP(1) SLURP(1)
implementations, setting distributions requires the server
to open each article, search through for the distributions
line and check it against the supplied list. This will not
only increase the load on the server substantially, but
increase the amount of time for the connection.
There are 3 possible flags: i, l and r which have the same
meaning as the command line options. If present, username
and password will be sent to the server as part of the
simple authorisation protocol when the connection is first
made.
slurp.<hostname>[.<sublist>]
The file slurp.<hostname> contains the time when slurp
last connected to the NNTP server at <hostname>. If a sub-
list has been specified with the -s option then this will
be appended with a period to the name. slurp can then use
this time to pick up all the articles that have arrived at
the server since the last session. It may be followed on
subsequent lines by a list of message IDs of articles that
are to be retrieved from the server in the next session.
Each time slurp is run and slurp.<hostname> updated, the
current slurp.<hostname> will be backed up in the file
slurp.<hostname>.o.
OPERATION
When run, slurp will first retrieve the appropriate news-
group list, distribution list and start time for the spec-
ified server, either from the configuration files or over-
riding those settings with the command line options.
If the -w option is not set, then the current time will be
obtained to use as the start time for the next session. If
the -l option is specified, this will be taken from the
local machine, otherwise it will be retrieved from the
remote server through a call to the tcp time service
there. If -i is not specified, then the message IDs of any
articles which were not retrieved in the last session will
be loaded from slurp.<hostname>.
Slurp will now connect to the NNTP server at the remote
host. If a username and password for use with the simple
authorisation protocol have been supplied then they will
be sent to the server. If the -r option is specified, then
a 'MODE READER' command will be sent, to ensure at INN
sites that slurp is talking to nnrpd.
A NEWNEWS request will now be issued, asking for all the
articles that have arrived in the specified list of news-
groups since the specified time. The server will respond
with a list of message IDs. If a message ID is not already
present in the local history file, then it will be stored
V1.08 20 August 1993 3
SLURP(1) SLURP(1)
in memory. If the list of newsgroups is too large to fit
on one line (NNTP has a maximum line length of 512 charac-
ters) then a series of NEWNEWS requests will be carried
out, adding further message IDs to the memory list if they
are not already present.
Once this has been completed, slurp moves into an article
retrieval stage. It will go through the list of message
IDs in memory and request them in turn from the server,
adding each article to the batch of articles being either
stored in the incoming news directory or piped to rnews.
When a batch is found to be larger than the maximum size,
it will be submitted to the news system.
Once all the articles have been retrieved, the final batch
of articles will be submitted. If the -w option has not
been set, then the previously obtained time to use for the
next NEWNEWS will be written to slurp.<hostname>. If an
error has occurred, then the message IDs of any unre-
trieved articles are also written to this file, for
retrieval in the next session.
Statistics on the connection will be logged to syslog (or
stderr if syslog is not available). The new article count
is the total number of articles that have been submitted
to the new system. The duplicate count is how many message
IDs were found to already exist on the local system. If
two NEWNEWS requests are necessary and a message ID was
returned by both requests, then it will be included twice
in the duplicate count. The missing count is those arti-
cles which were in the server's history file but didn't
exist as actual article files, usually because they have
been cancelled. If configured, the speed of transfer of
the article retrieval stage will also be logged.
RETURN CODES
Slurp returns a series of return codes which may be useful
to controlling programs:-
0 - Successful completion
1 - General system error
2 - Incorrect arguments supplied or incorrect con-
figuration files.
3 - Error occurred during attempt to connect to
remote host
4 - NNTP Protocol error
5 - Insufficient disk space available for news
batch.
FILES
/usr/lib/news/slurp.sys
/usr/lib/news/slurp.<hostname>
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SLURP(1) SLURP(1)
AUTHOR
Stephen Hebditch <steveh@orbital.demon.co.uk>
SEE ALSO
rnews(8)
RFC977 - Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP),
RFC1036 - Usenet Article Format standard.
V1.08 20 August 1993 5