NAME

innxbatch, sendxbatches - Send xbatched Usenet articles to a remote NNTP server

SYNOPSIS

innxbatch [-Dv] [-t timeout] [-T timeout] host file [file ...]

innxbatch -i [-Dv] [-t timeout] [-T timeout] host

sendxbatches sitename host file [file ...]

DESCRIPTION

innxbatch connects to port 119 of the NNTP server at the specified host, and sends it the specified xbatch files, using the XBATCH extension to the NNTP protocol. These files are specified either from the command line or from standard input if i is used.

Each file is removed after it has been successfully transferred.

If a communication error such as a write(2) failure, or an unexpected reply from the remote server occurs, innxbatch will stop sending and leave all remaining files untouched for later retry.

If authentication credentials are present for the remote server in the passwd.nntp file in pathetc, then innxbatch will use them to authenticate.

innxbatch does not use itself any file locking. At worst, a batch could be transmitted twice in parallel by two independent invocations of innxbatch. To prevent this, it should be invoked by a script run out of cron(8) that uses shlock(1) to lock the host name, followed by a "ctlinnd flush" command to flush the batch file. sendxbatches is such a wrapper around innxbatch. It will ensure only one instance is run, flush sitename (as used in the newsfeeds entry) and send to host the files given as arguments.

As the XBATCH extension is not a standardized NNTP command, some news servers do not recognize it. Moreover, to accept batches from remote peers via XBATCH, you have to explicitly enable the capability with the xbatch setting in incoming.conf. Instead of using innxbatch, you may consider innfeed, or if that is not possible, nntpsend.

OPTIONS

-D: Prints debugging information on standard error. This will show the protocol transactions between innxbatch and the NNTP server on the remote host.
-i: Reads batch file names from standard input. For each successfully transmitted batch, an "OK" is printed on stdout to indicate that another file name is expected.
-t timeout: Specifies a timeout in seconds on how long to try to make the connection. Otherwise, innxbatch normally blocks until the connection is made.
-T timeout: Specifies the total amount of time in seconds that should be allowed for article transfers.
The default is to wait until an I/O error occurs, or all the articles have been transferred. If this flag is used, the time is checked just before each article is started; it will not abort a transfer that is in progress.
-v: Upon exit, innxbatch reports transfer and CPU usage statistics via syslog(3). If this flag is used, they will also be printed on the standard output.

EXAMPLES

A sample newsfeeds entry to produce appropriate xbatch files is:

nase\
    :*\
    :Tc,Wnb\
    :<pathbin>/batcher -p "(<$COMPRESS in <pathlib>/innshellvars>\
        > <pathoutgoing>/nase.\$\$)" nase.do.main

A sample script to invoke innxbatch(8) is:

#! /bin/sh
#  Send xbatches for a site, wrapped around innxbatch.
if [ $# -lt 3 ]
then
    echo "usage: $0 <sitename> <hostname> <xbatch file name> ..."
    exit 1
fi
. <pathlib>/innshellvars
site="$1"; host="$2"; shift; shift
ctlinnd flush "$site" \
&& sleep 5 \
&& exec ${NEWSBIN}/innxbatch -v -D "$host" $*

You can use sendxbatches, already shipped with INN, doing locking. An example of call is:

sendxbatches nase remote.news.server.name <pathoutgoing>/nase*

HISTORY

Written by Stefan Petri <petri@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de>, modelled after innxmit and the XBATCH patch for the NNTP reference implementation. Examples from Karsten Leipold <poldi@dfn.de>. Rewritten into POD by Julien Elie.