focal (8) snget.8.gz

NAME

       snget,sngetd - fetch news from upstream sites and store them locally.

SYNOPSIS

       snget [options] [news.group...]
       sngetd [options]
       options: [-d] [-h Bps] [-p nparallel] [-c depth] [-m max]

DESCRIPTION

       snget  fetches  articles for the news.groups on the command line (or all non-local newsgroups if none are
       specified) from their respective upstream feeds, and stores them in the news spool /var/spool/sn.   If  a
       newsgroup  could  not  be  fetched for, it may be attempted again.  sngetd does the same, except it reads
       newsgroup names from /var/spool/sn/.fifo and does not exit.  sngetd does not fork into the background.

       snget does not guarantee to fetch the groups in the order specified  on  the  command  line.   snget  and
       sngetd will write errors and status messages to descriptor 2.

       snget  and  sngetd  are  both scheduling wrappers that call /usr/sbin/SNHELLO, snfetch, and snstore.  You
       must own /var/spool/sn or be root in order to run snget and sngetd.

OPTIONS

       -d     Enable verbosity, may be specified multiple times.  This option is also propagated to snfetch  and
              snstore.

       -p nparallel
              Attempt to fetch for nparallel newsgroups at once.  Default is 4, maximum is 8.

       -h Bps Throttle  the sum of bandwidth used by all snfetches to Bps bytes per second.  This option is used
              to prevent snget or sngetd from hogging the network.  By default there is no throttling.

       -c depth
              depth is passed to snfetch as the depth of the command pipeline.

       -m max The very first time contacting the news server, retrieve no more than max articles per  newsgroup,
              default  is  200.   This  option is useful only if there are unprimed newsgroups and has no effect
              otherwise.  The .max file in each newsgroup directory still applies (see snfetch(8)).

       -t timeout
              This option is not documented because it is ignored and will disappear in a future  release.   See
              .timeout in FILES next.

FILES

       Server Directories
              These  are  the  directories  /var/spool/sn/.outgoing/server.name:port,  which  are symlinked from
              /var/spool/sn/news.group/.outgoing.  If the latter isn't a (symlink to a) directory,  snget  won't
              fetch for news.group.

       /var/spool/sn/.outgoing/server.name:port/.timeout
              If  this  file  exists  and  contains  a number, this is taken to be the timeout in seconds in all
              dealings with server.name:port.  Default is 120 seconds.

       /var/spool/sn/.outgoing/server.name:port/.SNHELLO
              If this program file exists, it is invoked instead of the default (usually /usr/sbin/SNHELLO) when
              an  NNTP  connection  is  first  made to server.name:port in order to read the greeting and upload
              posted articles.  If server.name:port requires a username and password, you would copy the default
              here and edit that information in.

       /var/spool/sn/news.group/{.serial,.max}
              snget and sngetd read these files on behalf of snfetch.

SIGNALS

       Other signals have default behaviour.

       SIGUSR1
              If -h Bps was specified, Bps is halved, else is ignored.

       SIGUSR2
              If -h Bps was specified, Bps is doubled, else is ignored.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

       See also /usr/sbin/SNHELLO for the list of environment variables exported by snget/sngetd.

       SNROOT If  this  is  set  and is not empty, the value is used in place of /var/spool/sn, the default news
              spool directory.

       PATH   To find SNHELLO (if this server does not have a .SNHELLO), snfetch, and snstore.  If PATH does not
              contain /usr/sbin as one of it's components, /usr/sbin is appended to it.

SEE ALSO

       snfetch(8), snstore(8), /usr/sbin/SNHELLO