NAME

       applyfilter - apply filter settings to news spool

SYNOPSIS

       applyfilter [-v] ... newsgroup

DESCRIPTION

       Leafnode  is  a USENET package intended for small sites, where there are few users and little disk space,
       but where a large number of groups is desired.

       Applyfilter is the program to apply filter settings to your newsspool, particularly  after  changes  that
       were  not  in  effect at the time the articles were downloaded with fetchnews. Applyfilter is used if you
       want to remove postings from your spool matching a certain filter  pattern  (see  FILES  below).  If  the
       headers of an article match any of the filtering rules, the article is being deleted from the newsgroup.

       Applyfilter sets its real and effective uid to "news".

OPTIONS

       -v     Be verbose.

       newsgroup
              is the newsgroup you want to apply the filter to.

FILES

       A  file  specified  in  the  filterfile option of /etc/news/leafnode/config contains the set of filtering
       rules that are applied to the newsspool.  Each rule must be on a separate line. Empty lines and  comments
       (marked by a # which MUST be at the beginning of the line) are allowed and will be ignored.

       Each  line contains a regular expression that will be compiled with the PCRE_MULTILINE option set (unless
       it is a comment line or an empty line). Every regular expression applied  to  the  whole  message  header
       (folded  message  headers are unfolded before the match is attempted).  If any regular expression matches
       the header, the posting  gets  removed.  For  example,  the  following  set  of  rules  will  delete  all
       crosspostings to alt.flame.

       ^Newsgroups:.*[, ]alt.flame$
       ^Newsgroups:.*[, ]alt.flame,

       ^Newsgroups:  indicates  that  the  pattern  should  only be applied to the Newsgroups: header. After the
       header, an arbitrary number of characters may follow, ending in either a comma or a  space.  After  that,
       alt.flame  must be in the line, either at the end of the line (first entry) or in the middle of the line,
       followed by other newsgroups (second entry).

       Unfortunately, regular expressions are a complex matter and outside the scope of  this  document.  Please
       see the manual pages provided with the PCRE library for details.

       Note  that  some  leafnode programs (such as fetchnews) feed the header line by line to the regexp (after
       unfolding), others (such as applyfilter) feed the whole header in one large blob. This does  not  usually
       matter  because  patterns  are  compiled  in  multiline  mode,  but will matter if you're trying to match
       multiple headers in the same regexp – this would work with applyfilter, but not with fetchnews.

ENVIRONMENT

       LN_LOCK_TIMEOUT
              This variable is parsed as an unsigned integer value and determines how many  seconds  applyfilter
              will  wait  when  trying  to  obtain  the lock file from another leafnode program. 0 means to wait
              indefinitely. This variable takes precedence over the configuration file.

AUTHOR

       Copyright 1999 by Cornelius Krasel <krasel@wpxx02.toxi.uni-wuerzburg.de>.
       Copyright 2002 – 2006 by Matthias Andree <matthias.andree@gmx.de>.

       Leafnode was originally written by Arnt Gulbrandsen <agulbra@troll.no> and is copyright 1995 – 1996 Troll
       Tech AS, Postboks 6133 Etterstad, 0602 Oslo, Norway, fax +47 22646949.

SEE ALSO

       pcrepattern(3), leafnode(8), fetchnews(8), texpire(8).