RAWDOG(1)RAWDOG(1)NAMErawdog - an RSS Aggregator Without Delusions Of Grandeur
SYNOPSISrawdog [options]
DESCRIPTIONrawdog is a feed aggregator for Unix-like systems.
rawdog uses the Python feedparser module to retrieve articles from a
number of feeds in RSS, Atom and other formats, and writes out a single
HTML file, based on a template either provided by the user or generated
by rawdog, containing the latest articles it's seen.
rawdog uses the ETags and Last-Modified headers to avoid fetching a
file that hasn't changed, and supports gzip and delta compression to
reduce bandwidth when it has. rawdog is configured from a simple text
file; the only state kept between invocations that can't be recon‐
structed from the feeds is the ordering of articles.
OPTIONS
This program follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long
options starting with two dashes (`-').
General Options
-d DIR, --dir DIR
Use DIR instead of the $HOME/.rawdog directory. This option
lets you have two or more rawdog setups with different configu‐
rations and sets of feeds.
-N, --no-locking
Do not lock the state file.
rawdog usually claims a lock on its state file, to stop more
than one instance from running at the same time. Unfortunately,
some filesystems don't support file locking; you can use this
option to disable locking entirely if you're in that situation.
-v, --verbose
Print more detailed information about what rawdog is doing to
stderr while it runs.
-V FILE, --log FILE
As with -V, but write the information to FILE.
-W, --no-lock-wait
Exit silently if the state file is already locked.
If the state file is already locked, rawdog will normally wait
until it becomes available, then run. However, if you're got a
lot of feeds and a slow network connection, you might prefer
rawdog to just give up immediately if the previous instance is
still running.
Actions
rawdog will perform these actions in the order given.
-a URL, --add URL
Try to find a feed associated with URL and add it to the config
file.
URL may be a feed itself, or it can be an HTML page that links
to a feed in any of a variety of ways. rawdog uses heuristics
to pick the best feed it can find, and will complain if it can't
find one.
-c FILE, --config FILE
Read FILE as an additional config file; any options provided in
FILE will override those set in the main config file (with the
exception of "feed", which is cumulative). FILE may be an abso‐
lute path or a path relative to your .rawdog directory.
Note that $HOME/.rawdog/config will still be read first even if
you specify this option. -c is mostly useful when you want to
write the same set of feeds out using two different sets of out‐
put options.
-f URL, --update-feed URL
Update the feed pointed to by URL immediately, even if its
period hasn't elapsed since it was last updated. This is useful
when you're publishing a feed yourself, and want to test whether
it's working properly.
-l, --list
List brief information about each of the feeds that was known
about at the time of the last update.
-r URL, --remove URL
Remove feed URL from the config file.
-s TEMPLATE, --show TEMPLATE
Print one of the templates currently in use to stdout. TEMPLATE
may be page, item, feedlist or feeditem. This can be used as a
starting point if you want to design your own template for use
with the corresponding template option in the config file.
-u, --update
Fetch data from the feeds and store it. This could take some
time if you've got lots of feeds.
-w, --write
Write out the HTML output file.
Special Actions
If one of these options is specified, rawdog will perform only that
action, then exit.
--dump URL
Show what rawdog's feed parser returns for URL. This can be
useful when trying to understand why rawdog doesn't display a
feed correctly.
--help Provide a brief summary of all the options rawdog supports.
EXAMPLESrawdog is typically invoked from cron(1). The following crontab(5)
entry would fetch data from feeds and write it to HTML once an hour,
exiting if rawdog is already running:
0 * * * * rawdog-Wuw
FILES
$HOME/.rawdog/config
SEE ALSOcron(1).
AUTHORrawdog was mostly written by Adam Sampson <ats@offog.org>, with contri‐
butions and bug reports from many of rawdog's users. See rawdog's NEWS
file for a complete list of contributors.
This manual page was originally written by Decklin Foster <deck‐
lin@red-bean.com>, for the Debian project (but may be used by others).
RAWDOG(1)
