NAME

send-uucp - Send Usenet articles via UUCP

SYNOPSIS

send-uucp [site ...]

DESCRIPTION

The send-uucp program processes batch files written by innd(8) to send Usenet articles to UUCP sites. It reads a configuration file to control how it behaves with various sites. Normally, it is run periodically out of cron to put together batches and send them to remote UUCP sites.

It makes it possible to reduce bandwidth usage and to send news to remote UUCP sites which cannot receive a real-time feed (for instance if they are over dial-up connections).

OPTIONS

Any arguments provided to the program are interpreted as a list of sites specified in send-uucp.cf for which batches should be generated. If no arguments are supplied then batches will be generated for all sites listed in that configuration file.

CONFIGURATION

The sites to which articles are to be sent must be configured in the configuration file send-uucp.cf in pathetc as set in inn.conf. Each site is specified with a line of the form:

    site[:host[:funnel]] [compressor [maxsize [batchtime]]]

site: The news site name being configured. This must match a site name from newsfeeds(5).
host: The UUCP host name to which batches should be sent for this site. If omitted, the news site name will be used as the UUCP host name.
funnel: In the case of a site configured as a funnel, send-uucp needs to flush the channel (or exploder) being used as the target of the funnel instead of flushing the site. This is the way to tell send-uucp the name of the channel or exploder to flush for this site. If not specified, default to flushing the site.
compressor: The compression method to use for batches. This should be one of "bzip2", "compress", "gzip" or "none". Arguments for the compression command may be specified by using "_" instead of spaces. For example, "gzip_-9". The default value is "gzip".
maxsize: The maximum size in bytes of a single batch before compression. The default value is 500000 bytes.
batchtime: A comma separated list of hours during which batches should be generated for a given site. When send-uucp runs, a site will only be processed if the current hour matches one of the hours in batchtime. The default is no limitation on when to generate batches.

Fields are separated by spaces and only the site name needs to be specified, with defaults being used for unspecified values. If the first character on a line is a hash sign ("#") then the rest of the line is ignored.

EXAMPLE

Here is an example for the send-uucp.cf configuration file:

    zoetermeer      gzip            1048576         5,18,22
    hoofddorp       gzip            1048576         5,18,22
    pa3ebv          gzip            1048576         5,18,22
    drinkel         bzip2           1048576         5,6,18,20,22,0,2
    manhole         compress        1048576         5,18,22
    owl             compress        1048576
    able
    pern::MYFUNNEL!

This defines eight UUCP sites. The first three and the last two use "gzip" compression, the fourth site ("drinkel") uses "bzip2" and the remaining sites ("manhole" and "owl") use "compress". The first six use a batch size of 1 MB, and the two last sites ("able" and "pern") use the default of 500,000 bytes. The "zoetermeer", "hoofddorp", "pa3ebv", and "manhole" sites will only have batches generated for them during the hours of 05:00, 18:00, and 22:00, and the "drinkel" site will only have batches generated during those hours and 06:00, 20:00, 00:00, and 02:00. There are no restrictions on when batches will be generated for "owl", "able" and "pern".

The "pern" site is configured as a funnel into "MYFUNNEL!". send-uucp will issue "ctlinnd flush MYFUNNEL!" instead of "ctlinnd flush pern".

As for the newsfeeds file, the usual flags used for a UUCP feed are "Tf,Wnb". Here is a typical entry for "zoetermeer", where the batching is kept between 4 KB and 1 KB:

    zoetermeer\
        :*,!junk,!control,!control.*/!foo\
        :Tf,Wnb,B4096/1024:

FILES

pathbin/send-uucp: The Perl script itself used to create news batches from the outgoing files.
pathetc/send-uucp.cf: The configuration file which specifies a list of sites to be processed.

HISTORY

This program was originally written by Edvard Tuinder <ed@elm.net> and then maintained and extended by Miquel van Smoorenburg <miquels@cistron.nl>. Marco d'Itri <md@linux.it> cleaned up the code for inclusion in INN. This manual page was written by Mark Brown <broonie@sirena.org.uk>.