Ubuntu Manpage: inews - Post a Usenet article to the local news server

Provided by: inn2-inews_2.7.1~20230131-1build1_amd64

NAME

       inews - Post a Usenet article to the local news server

SYNOPSIS

       inews [-ADEhHILNOPRSvVWXY] [-acdefFimnorstwx value] [-p port] [file]

DESCRIPTION

inews reads a Usenet news article, perhaps with headers, from file or standard input if no
file is given. It adds some header fields and performs some consistency checks. If the
article does not meet those checks, the article is rejected. If it passes the checks,
inews sends the article to the local news server as specified in inn.conf.

By default, if a file named .signature exists in the home directory of the posting user,
it is appended to the post, preceded by a line that contains only "-- ". Signatures are
not allowed to be more than four lines long.

Control messages other than cancel messages are only allowed if inews is being run by the
news user or by a user in the news group and if the control message is recognized. If the
article contains a Distribution header field with a distribution that matches one of the
bad distribution patterns in inn/options.h (anything containing a period by default), the
message will be rejected. The message will also be rejected if checkincludedtext is true
in inn.conf, it contains more quoted text than original text, and it is over 40 lines
long.

If not provided, the Path header field body will be "not-for-mail". If -x is given, its
value will be added to the beginning of the Path header field. You may for instance want
to add a special "path-identity" value related to the host running inews, which will
appear as "path-identity!not-for-mail" in the Path header field.

If posting fails, a copy of the failed post will be saved in a file named dead.article in
the home directory of the user running inews. inews exits with a non-zero status if
posting failed or with a zero status if posting was successful.

OPTIONS

Most of the options to inews take a single value and set the corresponding header field
body in the message that is posted. If the value is more than one word or contains any
shell metacharacters, it must be quoted to protect it from the shell. Here are all the
options that set header fields and the corresponding header field body:

-a Approved
-c Control
-d Distribution
-e Expires
-F References
-f From
-m Message-ID
-n Newsgroups
-o Organization
-r Reply-To
-t Subject
-w Followup-To
-x Path (prefix)

The -x argument will be added to the beginning of the normal Path header field body; it
will not replace it contrary to what other options do. This behaviour is historical, and
was first implemented in the inews program shipped with B News (the original meaning of -x
was to say not to forward the article to a specified site).

-A, -V, -W
Accepted for compatibility with C News. These options have no affect.

-i, -I, -L, -s, -v, -X
Accepted for compatibility with tinews(1). These options have no effect.

-D, -N
Perform the consistency checks and add header fields where appropriate, but then print
the article to standard output rather than sending it to the server. -N is accepted
as as synonym for compatibility with C News.

-E If the article is empty (that is to say with no body), inews bails out with an error.
When -E is used, inews will just silently discard the message and exit.

Note that control messages with no body are not rejected.

-h Normally, this flag should always be given. It indicates that the article consists of
headers, a blank line, and then the message body. If it is omitted, the input is
taken to be just the body of the message, and any desired header fields have to be
specified with command-line options as described above.

-H Print to standard output a help message.

-O By default, an Organization header field will be added if none is present in the
article. To prevent adding the default (from organization in inn.conf), use this
flag.

-p port
Connect to the specified port on the server rather than to the default (port 119).

-P inews computes a sender address with the username of the user running inews and the
hostname of the news server. It represents the actual poster of the article.

By default, a Sender header field will be added with that value if none is present in
the article or if the From header field is not already set to that value. Moreover,
if a Sender header field is already present, it will be replaced with that value.

To prevent adding or overwriting the Sender header field, use this flag.

-R Reject all control messages.

-S Do not attempt to append ~/.signature to the message, even if it exists.

-Y By default, inews authenticates to the remote news server only if asked to, or if the
initial NNTP banner corresponds to a state in which postings are not allowed. Using
this flag leads inews to always authenticate, even if not asked to.

NOTES

       If the NNTP server requests authentication, inews will try to read passwd.nntp to get the
       username and password to use and will therefore need read access to that file.  This is
       typically done by making that file group-readable and adding all users who should be able
       to use inews to post to that server to the appropriate group.

       inews used to do even more than it does now, and all of the remaining checks that are not
       dependent on the user running inews should probably be removed in favor of letting the
       news server handle them.

       Since INN's inews uses inn.conf and some other corners of an INN installation, it's not
       very appropriate as a general stand-alone inews program for general use on a system that's
       not running a news server.  Other, more suitable versions of inews are available as part
       of various Unix news clients or by themselves.  We try to keep compatibility with the
       flags other implementations use (like C News, inews-xt and tinews(1)).

HISTORY