RNEWS(1)

NAME
       rnews - receive news from a UUCP connection

SYNOPSIS
       rnews  [  -h  host  ] [ -v ] [ -U ] [ -N ] [ -S master ] [
       input ]

DESCRIPTION
       Rnews reads messages typically queued by a  UUCP  newsfeed
       and sends them to the local InterNetNews server.  The mes-
       sage is read from the specified input  file,  or  standard
       input if no input is named.

       When  sent over UUCP, Usenet articles are typically joined
       in a single batch to reduce the  UUCP  overhead.   Batches
       can  also be compressed, to reduce the communication time.
       If a message does not start with a number sign (``#'') and
       an  exclamation point, then the entire input is taken as a
       single news article.  If it does start with with those two
       characters, then the first line is read and interpreted as
       a batch command.

       If the command is ``#! rnews nnn'' where nnn is a  number,
       then  the next nnn bytes (starting with the next line) are
       read as a news article.

       If the command is ``#! cunbatch'' then the rest  of  input
       is  fed to the compress(1) program with the ``-d'' flag to
       uncompress it, and the output of  this  pipe  is  read  as
       rnews's  input.   This  is for historical compatibility --
       there is no program named cunbatch.   A  compressed  batch
       will  start  with  a  ``#! cunbatch'' line, then contain a
       series of articles separated by ``#! rnews nnn'' lines.

       If the command is any other word, then rnews will  try  to
       execute   a  program  with  that  name  in  the  directory
       /usr/lib/news/bin/rnews.  The batch will be fed  into  the
       program's  standard input, and the standard output will be
       read back as input into rnews.

OPTIONS
       -S     If the ``-S'' flag is used, then rnews will connect
              to the specified host.  If the flag is not used, it
              will try to connect to  the  server  by  opening  a
              Unix-domain  stream  connection.  If that fails, it
              will try to open a TCP connection  to  the  default
              remote server.

       -U     If  the  server  is  not  available, the message is
              spooled  into   a   new   file   created   in   the
              /var/spool/news/in.coming  directory.   The  ``-U''
              flag may be used to send all  spooled  messages  to
              the server once it becomes available again, and can
              be invoked regularly by cron(8).

       -N     Normally, if unpacking the input fails  it  is  re-
              spooled  to  /var/spool/news/in.coming  for another
              attempt later.  If the ``-N'' flag is used then  no
              such  re-spooling is done and rnews exits with sta-
              tus value ``9'' to indicate this.

       -v     If the ``-v'' flag is used, it will print a  notice
              of  all  errors  on  the standard error, naming the
              input file (if known) and printing  the  first  few
              characters  of the input.  Errors are always logged
              through syslog(3).

       -h     If the ``-h'' flag is given, or failing  that,  the
              enviroment  variable  UU_MACHINE is set, then rnews
              will log the Message-ID, and host, for each article
              offered  to the server via syslog(3).  Logging will
              only be done if the value is not an empty string.

BUGS
       Rnews cannot process articles that have embedded  \0's  in
       them.

HISTORY
       Written  by  Rich  $alz lt;rsalz@uunet.uu.net for InterNet-
       News.  This is revision 1.23, dated 1996/11/08.

SEE ALSO
       innd(8).