knewsd - a tiny nntp demon
Knewsd is intended to be used with knews(1) to read news
(in)directly from the spool directory or even from a mail folder hierarchy.
It reads NNTP commands from standard input and writes replies to standard
output. The following commands are implemented:
ARTICLE [number]
BODY [number]
HEAD [number]
Return the head and/or body of the current or the
specified article. Message-id lookups are not supported.
GROUP newsgroup
Enters the given newsgroup.
HELP
Gives a list of the implemented commands.
LIST [active | newsgroups]
Lists the active file or the newsgroups file.
NEXT
Changes the current article pointer to the next
article
POST
Post an article via the specified posting agent. If none
has been specified, the reply will be '440 Posting not implemented.'
QUIT
Makes knewsd exit.
STAT number
Sets the current article pointer.
XOVER range
Returns the overview data for the specified range of
articles.
Knewsd implements the 'xover' command either by using the overview
files if present, or creating overview records on the fly, or a combination
of both if the overview file is incomplete. In the latter case, if the
-update flag is given, knewsd will update the overview files.
There is no need to spell out the entire option name, it is
sufficient to give a unique prefix, such as -a for -active.
- -spool
directory
- This is the spool directory. It must be specified, either at compile time
or at run time.
- -active
file
- This is the active file containing the newsgroups and the high and low
article counts. If this is not specifed, knews must be told not to try to
read the active file.
- -newsgroups
file
- This is the newsgroups file containing the group descriptions. It's
entirely optional.
- -overview
dir
- This can be used if the overview files reside in a different directory
hierarchy than the spool directory.
- -update
- If this is set, knewsd will (try to) update any incomplete overview files
it encounters. Not a good idea if you're reading a system wide spool
directory.
- -postingagent
agent
- If this is set, the 'agent' will be used to post articles. A possible
agent is 'exec inews -h'. This command is interpreted by the shell, and it
is important that it is exec'ed, so that knewsd may kill it on a broken
pipe to prevent posting of duplicate or truncated articles. Knewsd will
warn about this on startup.
This software is Copyright 1995, 1996 by Karl-Johan Johnsson.