NEWSFETCH(1)NEWSFETCH(1)NAMEnewsfetch - Pull news from an NNTP server and store in the mailbox for‐
mat.
SYNOPSISnewsfetch hostname[:port] [ -clsyvV ] [ -d dirname ] [ -f rcfile ] [ -t
N ] [ -T Timeout ] [ -w M ] [ -p | -P command ] [ -Y command ] [ -x
command ]
OPTIONS-c If this option is specified, newsfetch will not update .newsfetchrc
file
-d dirname directory where newsfetch will store news
-f rcfile This option tells newsfetch to use an alternate rc file
-l display name of all the newsgroups on the server and exit
-s output will be send to stdout instead of file
-t N time to pause after M articles, in seconds.
-w M This option tells newsfetch to pause for N seconds after M mes‐
sages to avoid heavy load on server. Time can be set by -t option
(default is 60 Seconds)
-T Timeout timeout value in seconds, default is 600 seconds
-p command Each article will be piped into a user command. The new pipe
will be created before fetching each article. This is useful for fil‐
tering the news article using external filter like procmail.
-P command This is similar to -p option except for all article will be
piped at once. The pipe will be created once before fetching each
group.
-y This is similar to -p 'procmail .newsfetchproc' option except that
.newsfetchproc is generated from .newsfetchfilter or .procmailrc file.
See generated file .newsfetchproc and procmailrc(5) for more detail
-Y command This is similar to -p option except that .newsfetchproc is
generated from .newsfetchfilter or .procmailrc file which can be used
by an external filter command
-x command A user command will be executed after fetching each news‐
group. The occurrence(s) of the string %s in the command will be
replaced by the name of the last fetched newsgroup
-V Print version and exit
DESCRIPTIONnewsfetch news.yourisp.com
newsfetch news.yourisp.com -x "command %s"
newsfetch $NNTPSERVER
newsfetch pulls news from an NNTP server and writes the articles to a
file named same as the newsgroup name, stdout or piped into an external
program. The file created by newsfetch can be used with any mail
reader.
NEWSFETCHRC
Newsfetch looks for a file .newsfetchrc to see the articles already
fetched. The format of .newsfetchrc is very simple. It consists of one
line for each newsgroup. The line contains three fields. The first
field is the name of the group. The next field is the last article
fetched in the group when that group was last downloaded. The third
field limits the number of messages (say N) which can be downloaded at
any given time (-1 for no limit). If there are more messages than N,
only N latest messages are downloaded. The fields are separated by a
space.
comp.os.vxworks 1 100
comp.dcom.telecom 1 -1
When Newsfetch is finished, it updates article numbers in the file
.newsfetchrc.
NEWS FILTERING
Downloaded News can be filtered by external filter like procmail. News‐
fetch adds a "Newsfetch: group" header to each articles to ease the
external filter interface. There are many way to achieve filtering
using newsfetch using -p, -P, -y or -Y options,
newsfetch news.yourisp.com -p procmail
This will pipe each article to procmail.
newsfetch news.yourisp.com -y
This will generate a procmail rcfile from .newsfetchfilter or .proc‐
mailrc and pipe each article into procmail.
newsfetch news.yourisp.com -Y command
This will generate a procmail rcfile from .newsfetchfilter or .proc‐
mailrc and pipe each article into external command which can use .news‐
fetchproc file.
newsfetch news.yourisp.com -P command
This will create a pipe to command before fetching each group and pipe
all downloaded articles.
WEB BASED NEWS INTERFACE
There is great demand for including the web support for the newsfetch.
I suggest to use hypermail in combination with newsfetch to make a very
good web based news interface (see above, option -x and -P). hypermail
is available from
http://www.eit.com/software/hypermail/hypermail.html
FILES
$HOME/.newsfetchrc
$HOME/.newsfetchfilter
$HOME/.newsfetchproc
HISTORY
Author - Yusuf Motiwala (yusuf@scientist.com)
http://ulf.wep.net/newsfetch.html
http://yusuf.home.ml.org
NOTE
Initially, I wrote this utility for personal use. The current version
may not have all the features you want, but you are free to modify the
code for your personal use. Feedbacks are welcome.
NEWSFETCH(1)
