Ubuntu Manpage: mailpost - Feed an e-mail message into a newsgroup

NAME

       mailpost - Feed an e-mail message into a newsgroup

SYNOPSIS

       mailpost [-hn] [-a addr] [-b database] [-c wait-time] [-d distribution] [-f addr] [-m
       mailing-list] [-o output-command] [-p port] [-r addr] [-t tempdir] [-x header[:header...]]
       [-z header[:header...]]  newsgroups

DESCRIPTION

       The mailpost program reads a properly formatted e-mail message from stdin and feeds it to
       inews for posting to a news server.  newsgroups is a whitespace-separated list of group
       names to which to post the article (at least one newsgroup must be specified).

       Before feeding the article to inews, it checks that the article has not been seen before,
       and it changes some header fields (cleaning up some address header fields, removing a few
       ones like X-Complaints-To and X-Trace, and putting "X-" in front of unknown header
       fields).  The Received and *-To header fields are also altered to prevent spamming the
       gateway (the name of the news server or the domain name set in fromhost, pathhost and
       domain in inn.conf are removed).

       If the article has been seen before (mailpost records the message-ID of each article it
       handles), then the article will be dropped with a non-zero error status.  Other errors
       will cause the article to be mailed to the newsmaster (selected at configure time and
       defaulting to "usenet").

       Normally, mailpost is run by sendmail(8) via an alias entry:

           local-mail-wreck-bikes: "|<pathbin in inn.conf>/mailpost
               -b /var/spool/mailpost -t /tmp -d local local.bicycles.racing"

       The -b and -t flags are useful to change the directories used by mailpost by default.  As
       a matter of fact, though it is recommended to run mailpost as the news user, it is as
       often as not run as another user, notably the mail user.  Therefore, you should make sure
       to create and set to be writable by the user that mailpost runs as the directories where
       to put the database and the temporary files.  Also, mailpost must be executable by that
       user.

       Instead of /var/spool/mailpost, the mail spool directory can be specified, or any other
       directory where the mailpost process has write access.

       A common practice to gateway a newsgroup to a mailing-list is to create a moderated
       newsgroup (running for instance the command "ctlinnd newgroup local.bicycles.racing m")
       and set the moderation address for this newsgroup in the moderators file in pathetc to the
       mailing-list address.  If you add an -a flag in the above example, then on the one hand,
       when a message is sent to the mailing-list, mailpost will be run, mark it as approved, and
       the message will directly reach the newsgroup.  On the other hand, when a message is
       posted to the newsgroup, it normally does not have an Approved header field, so it will be
       sent (by nnrpd) to the mailing-list address configured in the moderators file, which means
       the message reaches the mailing-list and, like any other messages posted to the mailing-
       list, it will be processed by mailpost, approved, and finally reach the newsgroup.

OPTIONS

-a addr
If the -a flag is used, addr (which is usually the e-mail address of the poster) is
added to the article as the body of an Approved header field. It is useful if one of
the newsgroup to which the article should be posted is moderated. (Of course, this
flag should be added only if you are supposed to auto-approve your posts.)

Be sure that the reader connection made by inews to post the article is allowed to
post approved articles (see the "A" letter in the access parameter of access blocks in
readers.conf).

-b database
If the -b flag is used, then it defines the location of the persistent database used
to store the message-IDs of articles sent on. This is to prevent articles looping
around if a news-to-mail gateway sends them back here. This option may be required if
the mailpost process does not have write access to the news database directory
(notably when it is executed as the mail user). The default value is pathdb as set in
inn.conf.

Make sure the specified location exists and is writable by the user mailpost runs as.

-c wait-time
The -c flag indicates a length of time to sleep before posting. If duplicate messages
are received in this interval (by any instance of mailpost using the same database),
the article is only posted once, but with Newsgroups: header modified to crosspost the
article to all indicated groups. The units for wait-time are seconds; a reasonable
value may be anywhere from tens to hundreds of seconds, or even higher, depending on
how long mail can be delayed on its way to your system.

-d distribution
If the -d flag is used, the value given is added to the article as the body of the
Distribution header field.

-f addr
The -f flag is a synonym for the -r flag.

-h Print usage information and exit.

-m mailing-list
If the -m flag is used, the value given is added to the article in a Mailing-List:
header, if such a header doesn't already exist.

-n If the -n flag is used, neither an article is posted nor a mail is sent in case an
error occurs. Everything is written to the standard output.

-o output-command
Specifies the program to which the resulting article processed by mailpost should be
sent. For debugging purpose, "-o cat" can be used. The default value is "inews -S
-h".

-p port
Specifies the port on which nnrpd is listening, used for article posting. If given,
-p is passed along to inews.

-r addr
A heuristic is used to determine a reasonable value for the Path: header. The -r flag
indicates what to use if no other value can be determined.

-t tempdir
If the -t flag is used, then it defines the location of the directory to use to
temporarily store error messages that are sent to the newsmaster. This option may be
required if the default value refers to a path that does not exist or the mailpost
process does not have write access to (notably when it is executed as the mail user).
Two paths are tried by default: pathtmp as set in inn.conf, and then /var/tmp if
pathtmp is not writable.

Make sure the specified location exists and is writable by the user mailpost runs as.

-x header[:header...]
A colon-separated list of additional header fields which should be treated as known
header fields; these header fields will be passed through to inews without having "X-"
prepended.

By default, known header fields are:

Archive
Archived-At
Comments
Content-*
Date
Distribution
From
Injection-Date
Keywords
Mailing-List
Message-ID
MIME-*
Organization
References
Return-Path
Sender
Subject
Summary

-z header[:header...]
A colon-separated list of additional header fields which should be removed.

By default, removed header fields are:

X-Complaints-To
X-Trace

FILES

       pathbin/mailpost
           The Perl script itself used to feed an e-mail message to a newsgroup.

       pathdb/mailpost-msgid.dir and pathdb/mailpost-msgid.pag
           The default database files which record previously seen message-IDs.

HISTORY