3 innduct \- quickly and reliably stream Usenet articles to remote site
11 implements NNTP peer-to-peer news transmission including the streaming
12 extensions, for sending news articles to a remote site.
14 You need to run one instance of innduct for each peer site. innduct
15 manages its interaction with innd, including flushing the feed as
16 appropriate, etc., so that articles are transmitted quickly, and
17 manages the retransmission of its own backlog. innduct includes the
18 locking necessary to avoid multiple simutaneous invocations.
20 By default, innduct reads the default feedfile corresponding to
24 .IR pathoutgoing / site )
25 and feeds it via NNTP, streaming if possible, to the host
30 is not specified, it defaults to
33 innduct daemonises after argument parsing, and all logging (including
34 error messages) are sent to syslog (facility
37 The best way to run innduct is probably to periodically invoke innduct
38 for each feed (e.g. from cron), passing innduct it the
40 option to arrange that it silently exits if an innduct is already
41 running for that site.
42 .SH INNDUCT VS INNFEED/NNTPSEND/INNXMIT
45 does roughly the same thing as innduct. However, the way it receives
46 information from innd can result in articles being lost (not offered
47 to peers) if innfeed crashes for any reason. This is an inherent
48 defect in the innd channel feed protocol. innduct uses a file feed,
49 constantly "tailing" the feed file, and where implemented uses
51 to reduce the latency which would come from having to constantly poll
52 the feed file. innfeed is capable of feeding multiple peers from a
53 single innfeed instance, whereas each innduct process handles exactly
54 one peer. innduct is much smaller and simpler, at 3kloc to innfeed's
55 25kloc. innfeed needs a separate wrapper script or similar
56 infrastructure (of which there is an example in its manpage), whereas
57 innduct can be run directly and doesn't need help from shell scripts.
60 processes feed files in batch mode. That is, you have to periodically
61 invoke nntpsend, and when you do, the feed is flushed and articles
62 which arrived before the flush are sent to the peer. This introduces
63 a batching delay, and also means that the NNTP connection to the peer
64 needs to be remade at each batch. nntpsend (which uses innxmit)
65 cannot make use of multiple connections to a single peer site.
66 However, nntpsend can be left to find automatically which sites need
71 is the actual NNTP feeder program used by nntpsend.
74 .BR \-f | \-\-feedfile= \fIfeedfile\fR
77 If the specified value ends in a
79 it is taken as a directory to use as if it were
81 and the actual feed file used is
82 .IR specified_feedfile / site .
84 .BR \-q | \-\-quiet-multiple
85 Makes innduct silently exit (with status 0) if another innduct holds
86 the lock for the site. Without \fB-q\fR, this causes a fatal error to
87 be logged and a nonzero exit.
90 Do not daemonise. innduct runs in the foreground and all messages
91 (including all debug messages) are written to stderr.
94 Do not try to use the streaming extensions to NNTP (for use eg if the
95 peer can't cope when we send MODE STREAM).
98 Do not try to use the file change monitoring support to watch for
99 writes by innd to the feed file; poll it instead. (If file monitoring
100 is not compiled in, this option just downgrades the log message which
101 warns about this situation.)
103 .BR \-C | \-\-inndconf= \fIFILE\fR
106 instead of the default
112 at the remote site rather than to the NNTP port (119).
115 Just print a brief usage message and list of the options to stdout.
117 You should not normally need to adjust these. Time intervals may
118 specified in seconds, or as a number followed by one of the following
121 .BR "sec min hour day" ,
124 .BI \-\-max-connections= max
125 Restricts the maximum number of simultaneous NNTP connections used by
130 There is no global limit on the number of connections.
132 .BI \-\-max-queue-per-conn= max
133 Restricts the maximum number of outstanding articles queued on any
134 particular connection
136 (Non-streaming connections can only handle one article at a time.)
140 .BI \-\-feedfile-flush-size= bytes
141 Specifies that innduct should flush the feed and start a new feedfile
142 when the existing feedfile size exceeds
144 the effect is that the innduct will try to avoid the various
145 batchfiles growing much beyond this size while the link to the peer is
146 working. The default is
149 .BI \-\-period-interval= PERIOD-INTERVAL
150 Specifies wakup interval and period granularity.
151 innduct wakes up every
153 to do various housekeeping checks. Also, many of the timeout and
154 rescan intervals (those specified in this manual as
156 are rounded up to the next multiple of
157 .IR PERIOD-INTERVAL .
159 .BI \-\-connection-timeout= TIME
160 How long to allow for a connection setup attempt before giving up.
164 .BI \-\-stuck-flush-timeout= TIME
165 How long to wait for innd to respond to a flush request before giving
169 .BI \-\-feedfile-poll= TIME
170 How often to poll the feedfile for new articles written by innd
173 or equivalent) is not available. (When file monitoring is available,
174 there is no need for periodic checks and we wake immediately up
175 whenever the feedfile changes.)
179 .BI \-\-no-check-proportion= PERCENT
180 If the moving average of the proportion of articles being accepted
181 (rather than declined) by the peer exceeds this value, innduct uses
182 "no check mode" - ie it just sends the peer the articles with TAKETHIS
183 rather than checking first with CHECK whether the article is wanted.
184 This only affects streaming connections. The default is
188 .BI \-\-no-check-response-time= ARTICLES
189 The moving average mentioned above is an alpha-smoothed value with a
195 .BI \-\-reconnect-interval= PERIOD
196 Limits initiation of new connections to one each
198 This applies to reconnections if the peer has been down, and also to
199 ramping up the number of connections we are using after startup or in
200 response to an article flood. The default is
203 .BI \-\-flush-retry-interval= PERIOD
204 If our attempt to flush the feed failed (usually this will be because
205 innd is not running), try again after
210 .BI \-\-earliest-deferred-retry= PERIOD
211 When the peer responds to our offer of an article with a 431 or 436
212 NNTP response code, indicating that the article has already been
213 offered to it by another of its peers, and that we should try again,
216 before offering the article again. The default is
219 .BI \-\-backlog-rescan-interval= PERIOD
220 We scan the directory containing
222 for backlog files at least every
224 in case the administrator has manually dropped in a file there for
228 .BI \-\-max-flush-interval= PERIOD
229 We flush the feed at least every
231 even if the current instance of the feedfile has not reached the size
236 .BI \-\-max-flush-interval= PERIOD
237 We flush the feed and start a new feedfile at least every
239 even if the current instance of the feedfile has not reached the size
244 .BI \-\-idle-timeout= PERIOD
245 Connections which have had no activity for
247 will be closed. This includes connections where we have sent commands
248 or articles but have not yet had the responses, so this same value
249 doubles as the timeout after which we conclude that the peer is
250 unresponsive or the connection has become broken.
254 .BI \-\-max-bad-input-data-ratio= PERCENT
255 We tolerate up to this proportion of badly-formatted lines in the
256 feedfile and other input files. Every badly-formatted line is logged,
257 but if there are too many we conclude that the corruption to our
258 on-disk data is too severe, and crash; to successfully restart,
259 administrator intervention will be required. This avoids flooding the
260 logs with warnings and also arranges to abort earlyish if an attempt
261 is made to process a file in the wrong format.
266 .BI \-\-max-bad-input-data-init= LINES
267 Additionally, we tolerate this number of additional badly-formatted
268 lines, so that if the badly-formatted lines are a few but at the start
269 of the file, we don't crash immediately.
272 (which would suffice to ignore one whole corrupt 4096-byte disk block
273 filled with random data, or one corrupt 1024-byte disk block filled
274 with an inappropriate text file with a mean line length of at least
276 .SH INTERACTING WITH INNDUCT
277 innduct dances a somewhat complicated dance with innd to make sure
278 that everything goes smoothly and that there are no races. (See the
279 two ascii-art diagrams in innduct.c for details of the protocol.) Do
280 not mess with the feedfile and other associated files, other than as
281 explained below in the section
284 If you tell innd to drop the feed, innduct will (when it notices,
285 which will normally be the next time it decides flushes) finish up the
286 articles it has in hand now, and then exit. It is harmless to cause
287 innd to flush the feed (but innduct won't notice and flushing won't
288 start a new feedfile; you have to leave that to innduct).
290 There are no signals that can usefully be sent to innduct to give it
291 complicated instructions. If you need to kill innduct, feel free to
296 and nothing will be broken or corrupted.
300 An instance of innduct is already running for this
307 The feed has been dropped by innd, and we (or previous innducts) have
308 successfully offered all the old articles to the peer site. Our work
312 innduct was invoked with bad options or command line arguments. The
313 error message will be printed to stderr, and also (if any options or
314 arguments were passed at all) to syslog with severity
318 Things are going wrong, hopefully shortage of memory, system file
319 table entries; disk IO problems; disk full; etc. The specifics of the
320 error will be logged to syslog with severity
322 (if syslog is working!)
325 Things are going badly wrong in an unexpected way: system calls which
326 are not expected to fail are doing so, or the protocol for
327 communicating with innd is being violated, or some such. Details will
328 be logged with severity
330 (if syslog is working!)
333 These exit statuses are used by children forked by innduct to
334 communicate to the parent. You should not see them. If you do, it is
338 .IP \fIpathoutgoing\fR/\fIsite\fR
339 .IX Item "default feedfile"
344 Main feed file as specified in
346 This and other batchfiles used by innduct contains lines each of which
348 \& \fItoken\fR \fImessageid\fR
349 where \fItoken\fR is the inn storage API token. Such lines can be
350 written by \fBTf,Wnm\fR in a \fInewsfeeds\fR(5) entry. During
351 processing, innduct overwrites lines in the batch files which
352 correspond to articles it has processed: the line is replaced with
353 one containing only spaces. Only innd should create this file, and
354 only innduct should remove it.
355 .IP \fIfeedfile\fR_lock
357 Lockfile, preventing multiple innduct invocations for the same
358 feed. A process holds this lock after it has opened the lockfile,
359 made an fcntl F_SETLK call, and then checked with stat and fstat that
360 the file it now has open and has locked still has the name
361 \fIfeedfile\fR_lock. (Only) the lockholder may delete the lockfile.
362 For your convenience, after the lockfile is locked,
369 are all written to the lockfile. NB that stale lockfiles may contain
370 stale data so this information should not be relied on other than for
372 .IP \fIfeedfile\fR_flushing
373 .IX Item "flushing file"
374 Batch file: the main feedfile is renamed to this filename by innduct
375 before it asks inn to flush the feed. Only innduct should create or
377 .IP \fIfeedfile\fR_defer
378 .IX Item "flushing file"
379 Batch file containing details of articles whose transmission has
380 recently been deferred at the request of the recipient site. Created,
381 written, read and removed by innduct.
382 .IP \fIfeedfile\fR_backlog.\fItime_t\fR.\fIinum\fR
383 .IX Item "backlog file"
384 Batch file containing details of articles whose transmission has less
385 recently been deferred at the request of the recipient site. Created
386 by innduct, and will also be read and removed by innduct. However you
387 (the administrator) may also safely remove backlog files.
388 .IP \fIfeedfile\fR_backlog\fIsomething\fR
389 .IX Item "manual backlog file"
390 Batch file manually provided by the administrator. The file should be
391 complete and ready to process at the time it is renamed or hardlinked
392 to this name. innduct will then automatically find and read and
393 process it and eventually remove it. The administrator may also
394 safely remove backlog files. \fIsomething\fR may not contain \fB#\fR
395 \fB~\fR or \fB/\fR. Be sure to have finished writing the file before
396 you rename it to match the pattern \fIfeedfile\fR\fB_backlog\fR*, as
397 otherwise innduct may find and process the file and read it to EOF
398 before you have finished creating it.
399 .IP /etc/news/inn.conf
403 if none is specified, for finding how to communicate with innd,
409 Written by Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
~ian / innduct.git / blob