This is fnews

fnews is part of a setup for running a very-small news server that pretends to take all news groups. With the included patch to nnrpd, it can auto-detect which news groups people are trying to read. It can then fetch articles for those groups.

It transfers news (usenet netnews) by pretending to read it and then shoving what it gets to another server.

It does all the news transfering with NNTP.

On systems that support XHDR, it is fairly efficient.

It creates and deletes news groups using ctlinnd, so it works best on systems that use INN.

Current status: abandoned
Last modification: 2002
Download: here



FNEWS(1)                                                              FNEWS(1)



FNEWS
       fnews - pull news that people actually read via nntp

SYNOPSIS
       fnews  [-newsrc]  [-fetch]  [-nnrpd]  [-force days] [-debug] [-verbose]
               -------    ------    ------    ------        ------   --------
       [-config config file] [PARAMETER=value]...
        -------       -       ---------

DESCRIPTION
       Fnews will use the NNTP to transfer news between two news servers.   It
       only  transfers the news that it believes people will want to read.  It
       knows what people want to read by looking at their fetched.

       Unlike some other similar programs, fnews will keep  track  of  article
       numbers  rather  than  using  the  newnews  command.  This is important
       because with most news implementations the newnews command thrahes  the
       server.

       Fnews  runs  in three passes.  The first pass (-nnrpd) is optional.  It
                                                      ------
       looks for files that have been touched by nnrpd when groups  have  been
       accessed.   The  result  of this pass is stored in the file $STATE/nnr-
                                                                   -----------
       pdlist for later processing by the -newsrc pass.  The  patch  to  nnrpd
       ------                             -------
       (version inn1.4unoff4) can be found at the end of the fnews file.

       The  second pass (-newsrc) is required.  During this pass .newsrc files
                         -------                                 -------
       are examined.  The result of this pass  is  a  file,  $STATE/fetchlist,
                                                             ----------------
       that  describes  which groups to fetch and how many articles to grab in
       each one.

       The last pass (-fetch) actually goes and gets the articles.
                      ------

OPTIONS
       There are only a few command line options to fnews, but there are  many
       configuration  options.   Since  fnews is a perl program distributed in
       source, the bulk of the configuration options are specified in the pro-
       gram  text  itself just after the copyright notice.  You do not need to
       change them there though: one of the parmateters, $CONFIG, is the loca-
                                                         -------
       tion  of  a  file to require before doing much else.  This file will be
       read before much else is evaluated.   Set your  overrides  there.   The
       name  of  this  file  can be specified on the command line with -config
                                                                       -------
       filename.

       The other options are -force days which will override the  touch  files
                             ------
       and  cause  days worth of news to be transfered.  You can get more ver-
       bose output by specifying -verbose, or -debug.
                                 --------     -------

       Finally, any of the configuration parameters (see the  source)  can  be
       overriden on the command line with an assigment: command=value.
                                                        -------

NEWS SERVER SETUP
       fnews  is asymetrical in how it talks to news servers.  It talks to the
       news server that it is transfering news from  as  if  it  were  a  news
       reader.  It talks to the server that it is transfering news to as if it
       were another news  server.   This  difference  can  make  configuration
       annoying.  However, it's easy to test: if you can read news with a news
       reader, you can get the news with fnews (if you don't have  permission,
       just use a packet forwarder).

       One  implication  is  that  with fnews, you tend get your news from one
       server and send your outgoing news to another.

USE WITH SLOW LINKS
       I built fnews mostly to optimize use of my  old  slow  (SLIP)  internet
       connection.   It  saved  my  line  by only transfering the news that is
       likely to be read.  In addition, I used a small  tcp  socket  forwarder
       process  to  introduce delay.  In my forwarded process, I have it use a
       small (128-byte) socket send buffer  so  that  a  round-trip  delay  is
       required   for   every   packet.   To  get  my  socket  forwarder,  ftp
       ftp://ftp.idiom.com/pub/muir-programs/tcp nest.c.
       ------------------------------------------------

AVAILABILITY
       The latest  version  of  fnews  is  available  through  anonymous  ftp:
       ftp://ftp.idiom.com/users/muir/CPAN/programs/fnews.
       --------------------------------------------------

AUTHOR
       David Muir Sharnoff    
       ----- ---- --------    ----------------



Edition                     March 11, 1993                        FNEWS(1)