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NNTPCLI.TXT
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1992-12-07
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PC KA9Q NNTP Client CS 13-11-92
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The nntp commands are:
nntp directory [<spool-directory> [<control-directory>]]
Allows specification of the spool directory (where the
news batches will be written) and the control directory
(where the history, data, kill and get files are kept).
The control directory is discussed below.
Default spool directory: /spool/mail
Default control directory: /spool/news
nntp groups [<group-list>]
Allows specification of group list (see discussion
below).
Default value: none
nntp addserver <server-name> <poll-interval>
[<time-window>] [<group-list>]
Allows specification of news servers. The poll-interval
is the interval in seconds between polls of the news
server (e.g., 1800 means poll the news server every 30
minutes). The time-window specifies a time window for
polling. The format is hour:min-hour:min (e.g.,
18:00-20:00 means only poll between 6pm and 8pm local
time). The group-list is discussed below.
Default value: none
nntp dropserver <server-name>
Removes a news server from the polling list.
nntp kick <server-name>
Forces a poll of the news server specified. Has no
effect if a poll is already being attempted.
nntp listservers
Lists the current news servers, the times until the next
poll and the polling intervals.
nntp batch [on|off [<buffers>]]
When on, allows requests to be sent to the news server
before the replies from previous requests have been
received. This makes things go faster. The number of
buffers determines the number of requests that may be
outstanding. Each buffer occupies around 1/2K of memory
space.
Default value: off, 2 buffers
nntp newgroups [on|off]
When on, the news server is asked for a list of new
groups created since the last successful poll. The list
is appended to the file NEWGROUP in the control
directory. No attempt is made to remove duplicate
entries.
Default value: off
nntp trace [<trace-level>]
Allows specification of trace information to be sent to
the screen. The levels are defined as follows:
0 - no tracing
1 - serious errors reported
2 - transient errors reported
3 - session progress reported
4 - actual received articles displayed
All error messages are sent to the ka9q log file whatever
the tracing level.
Default value: 1
nntp safety [on|off]
When on, output files are closed after each article is
received. This gives maximum protection if a machine
crash occurs but adds extra disk overhead.
Default value: on
nntp verbose [on|off]
When on, the following progress messages may be sent to
the screen:
"Trying to connect to news server <server> ...."
"Connected to news server"
"News available: <n> articles"
"News available: <n> new groups"
"News arrived (<n>/<n>): <newsgroups>, article:<msgid>"
"News duplicate: article <msgid>"
"News unavailable: article <msgid>"
"News summary: <n> articles (<n> bytes) in <n> sec
(<n> bytes/sec)"
"New articles: <n> duplicate, <n> unavailable,
<n> headers, <n> complete"
"Get articles: <n> invalid, <n> unavailable,
<n> received"
"History file: <n> entries, <n> complete scans"
"Throughput : <n>/<n> bytes in <n>/<n> sec
(<n>/<n> bytes/sec)"
"Closing news session"
When off, only the "News summary" message will be sent to
the screen. The session statistics are sent to the ka9q
log file whatever the verbose setting.
Default value: on
Control Directory
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The following files may be created or read from the control
directory:
NNTP.DAT
Used to record the time of the last successful poll
of each server. Optionally used to specify the
newsgroup list for each server. The format is
specified below. Old server entries are not
automatically removed from this file.
HISTORY
Used to hold the message ids of articles received.
This information is only required by the NNTP client
to prevent duplicate articles from being received.
Old message ids are not automatically removed from
this file - it will grow forever if not manually
pruned.
NEWGROUP
Used to hold the names of new groups created on the
servers. No attempt is made to prevent duplicate
names from being added. Old group names are not
automatically removed from this file.
KILL
Used to hold patterns with which received header
lines are compared. If certain patterns match then
the corresponding article bodies will not be
fetched. The format is specified below. If this
file exists then all new articles will be fetched in
two stages: header first then body.
GET
Used to hold message ids of articles that should be
unconditionally fetched (i.e., not subject to the
KILL file pattern matching). The message ids of
articles that are unavailable will not be removed
from this file. The file may therefore require
periodic flushing.
*.TMP, *.LCK
Temporary files created during an nntp session.
These files should be automatically deleted. The
*.LCK files should be manually deleted if there are
no active programs using files in the control
directory.
Format of the NNTP.DAT file
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There should be one line for each server. This line will be
automatically written after a successful nntp session and need
not be created manually. The line has the format:
<server-name> <date> <time>
The first character of the server name must be in column one.
<date> has the form YYMMDD and <time> has the form HHMMSS.
The year is assumed to be in the closest century and the time
is GMT. For example:
news.demon.co.uk 920909 073954
The newsgroups to be received from each server may optionally
be specified on the lines following the line for the server.
Each line containing a newsgroup specification must begin with
a whitespace character (e.g., space or tab). One or more
newsgroup entries may be put on a line, separated by
whitespace or commas. Multiple entries on one line will never
be split across multiple requests. Blank lines in the middle
of the newsgroup list force the list to be split into multiple
requests. Blank lines before and after the newsgroup list are
ignored.
Newsgroup entries may be complete names or may contain
asterisks ("*") to allow pattern matches. In addition, an
exclamation mark ("!") as the first character will negate a
match allowing newsgroups matching certain patterns to be
ignored. For example, "demon.*,!demon.test" will specify all
groups in the demon hierarchy except demon.test.
General guidance:
1 List all newsgroups one per line (except as noted below).
This will minimise the number of requests made.
2 Always list "omit" entries (entries beginning with an
exclamation mark) on the same line as the entries to
which they apply.
3 Don't separate the newsgroup list with blank lines.
However blank lines are ok before and after the list.
Example:
----------------------------------------
news.demon.co.uk 920909 073954
demon.* !demon.test
comp.binaries.eniac
comp.sys.eniac
comp.unix