Ubuntu Manpage: batcher - Article batching for InterNetNews

Provided by: inn2_2.7.2~20240212-1build3_amd64

NAME

       batcher - Article batching for InterNetNews

SYNOPSIS

       batcher [-rv] [-a articles] [-A total-articles] [-b size] [-B total-size] [-i string] [-N
       batches] [-p process] [-s separator] host [input]

DESCRIPTION

       batcher reads a list of files and prepares news batches for the specified host.  It is
       generally used to prepare UUCP feeds, but the resulting batches can be used by any
       application that uses rnews(1) to inject the articles.  It is normally invoked by a script
       run out of cron that uses shlock to lock the host, followed by ctlinnd to flush the batch
       file.  See send-uucp(8) for a front-end for batcher.

       batcher reads the file input, or standard input if no file is given.  If input is a
       relative file name, it is assumed to be in pathoutgoing as set in inn.conf.  Blank lines
       and lines starting with a number sign ("#") are ignored.  All other lines in the input
       should consist of one or two fields separated by a single space.  The first field is the
       storage API token of an article.  The second field, if present, specifies the size of the
       article in bytes.

       By default, batches are written to standard output (which isn't very useful if more than
       one batch is output), but see the -p option.

OPTIONS

-a articles
This flag limits the number of articles included in each batch. The default is no
limit. A new batch will be started when either the total bytes or the number of
articles written exceeds the specified limits.

-A total-articles
Limits the total number of articles written for all batches. As soon as the total
number of articles written to batches reaches or exceeds total-articles, all
additional articles in the input will be deferred. The default is no limit.

-b size
This flag sets the size limit for each batch; as soon as at least this much data has
been written out, a new batch will be started. The default size is 60 KB. Using "-b
0" will allow unlimited batch sizes.

-B total-size
Limits the total number of bytes written for all batches. As soon as the total bytes
written to batches reaches or exceeds total-size, all additional articles in the input
will be deferred. The default is no limit.

-i string
A batch starts with an identifying line to specify the unpacking method to be used on
the receiving end. When this flag is used, string, followed by a newline, will be
output at the start of each batch. The default is to have no initial string (under
the assumption that either the processor specified with the -p flag or some other
later process will add the appropriate line).

-N batches
Limits the total number of batches written. As soon as the number of batches written
reaches or exceeds batches, all additional articles in the input will be deferred.
The default is no limit.

-p process
By default, batches are written to standard output, which is not useful when more than
one output batch is created. If this option is given, each batch will instead be fed
via a pipe to the shell command process. The process argument must be an sprintf(3)
format string, which may have a single "%s" parameter that will be replaced with the
host name.

A common value is:

( echo '#! gunbatch' ; exec gzip -c ) | uux - -r -z %s!rnews

which generates gzip-compressed batches and feeds them to uux.

-r By default, batcher reports errors to pathlog/errlog. To suppress this redirection
and report errors to standard error, use the -r flag.

-s separator
Each article in a batch starts with a separator line that indicates the size of the
article. separator must be an sprintf(3) string, which may have a single "%ld" in the
string that will be replaced with the size of the article. If the separator is not
empty, a newline will also be appended to it when it is added to the beginning of each
article.

The default separator is:

#! rnews %ld

and this should rarely be changed.

-v Upon exit, batcher reports statistics via syslog. With this flag, the statistics will
also be printed to standard output.

EXIT STATUS

       If the input is exhausted and all batches are created successfully, batcher will exit with
       a zero status.

       If any of the limits specified with -A, -B, or -N flags are reached, or if there is an
       error in writing a batch, batcher will try to spool the remaining input by copying it to a
       file as follows:

       • If there was no input filename, the remaining input will be copied to pathoutgoing/host.

       • If an input filename was given, the remaining input will be copied to a temporary file
         named by appending ".bch" to the end of input (and qualified by adding pathoutgoing if
         input was not a fully qualified path).  If this happens successfully, batcher will then
         try to rename this temporary file to input (thus replacing input with a copy of itself
         with all of lines for the successfully batched articles removed).

       Upon receipt of an interrupt or termination signal, batcher will finish batching the
       current article, close the batch, and then rewrite the batch file as described above.

HISTORY