3 mailpost - Feed an e-mail message into a newsgroup
7 B<mailpost> [B<-hn>] [B<-a> I<addr>] [B<-b> I<database>] [B<-c> I<wait-time>]
8 [B<-d> I<distribution>] [B<-f> I<addr>] [B<-m> I<mailing-list>]
9 [B<-o> I<output-command>] [B<-p> I<port>] [B<-r> I<addr>]
10 [B<-x> I<header>[B<:>I<header>...]] I<newsgroups>
14 The B<mailpost> program reads a properly formatted e-mail message from stdin
15 and feeds it to B<inews> for posting to a news server. I<newsgroups> is a
16 whitespace-separated list of group names to which to post the article
17 (at least one newsgroup must be specified).
19 Before feeding the article to B<inews>, it checks that the article has not
20 been seen before, and it changes some headers (cleans up some address
21 headers, removes X-Trace: and X-Complaints-To:, and puts C<X-> in front
24 If the article has been seen before (B<mailpost> records the Message-ID of
25 each article it handles), then the article will be silently dropped. Other
26 errors will cause the article to be mailed to the newsmaster (selected
27 at configure time and defaulting to C<usenet>).
29 Normally, B<mailpost> is run by sendmail(8) via an alias entry:
31 local-mail-wreck-bikes: "|<pathbin in inn.conf>/mailpost
32 -b /var/tmp -d local local.mail.rec.bicycles.racing"
34 Instead of F</var/tmp>, the mail spool directory can be specified,
35 or any other directory where the B<mailpost> process has write access.
43 If the B<-a> flag is used, the value given is added to the article
44 as an Approved: header.
46 =item B<-b> I<database>
48 If the B<-b> flag is used, then it defines the location of the database
49 used to store the Message-IDs of articles sent on. This is to prevent articles
50 looping around if a news-to-mail gateway sends them back here. This option may
51 be required if the B<mailpost> process does not have write access to the news
52 temporary directory. The default value is I<pathtmp> as set in F<inn.conf>.
54 =item B<-c> I<wait-time>
56 The B<-c> flag indicates a length of time to sleep before posting. If
57 duplicate messages are received in this interval (by any instance of
58 B<mailpost> using the same database), the article is only posted once, but
59 with Newsgroups: header modified to crosspost the article to all indicated
60 groups. The units for I<wait-time> are seconds; a reasonable value may be
61 anywhere from tens to hundreds of seconds, or even higher, depending on how
62 long mail can be delayed on its way to your system.
64 =item B<-d> I<distribution>
66 If the B<-d> flag is used, the value given is added to the article as a
71 The B<-f> flag is a synonym for the B<-r> flag.
75 Print usage information and exit.
77 =item B<-m> I<mailing-list>
79 If the B<-m> flag is used, the value given is added to the article in a
80 Mailing-List: header, if such a header doesn't already exist.
84 If the B<-n> flag is used, neither an article is posted nor a mail is sent
85 in case an error occurs. Everything is written to the standard output.
87 =item B<-o> I<output-command>
89 Specifies the program to which the resulting article processed by B<mailpost>
90 should be sent. For debugging purpose, C<-o cat> can be used. The default
91 value is C<inews -S -h>.
95 Specifies the port on which B<nnrpd> is listening, used for article posting.
96 If given, B<-p> is passed along to B<inews>.
100 A heuristic is used to determine a reasonable value for the Path: header.
101 The B<-r> flag indicates what to use if no other value can be determined.
103 =item B<-x> I<header>[B<:>I<header>...]
105 A colon-separated list of additional headers which should be treated as
106 known headers; these headers will be passed through to B<inews> without
107 having C<X-> prepended.
130 =item I<pathbin>/mailpost
132 The Perl script itself used to feed an e-mail message to a newsgroup.
134 =item I<pathtmp>/mailpost-msgid.dir and I<pathtmp>/mailpost-msgid.pag
136 The default database files which record previously seen Message-IDs.
142 Written by Paul Vixie long ago and then hacked up by James Brister for INN
145 $Id: mailpost.pod 7795 2008-04-26 08:28:08Z iulius $
149 active(5), inews(1), inn.conf(5), nnrpd(8), uwildmat(3).