NAME

       news2mail - Channel script to gateway news into e-mails

SYNOPSIS

       news2mail

DESCRIPTION

       news2mail runs as a channel process underneath innd.  It is set up as channel feed in
       newsfeeds, with different mailing-lists as funnel entries pointing to it (see below);
       news2mail expects the token of an article followed by a sequence of list names.

       news2mail uses the configuration file pathetc/news2mail.cf to map mailing-list names to
       e-mail addresses.  news2mail causes the mail transport agent (usually sendmail, as set in
       the mta parameter in inn.conf) to queue the messages for later delivery (to avoid DOS
       attacks by mass postings).  You must run "sendmail -q" periodically to get the queue
       processed.

CONFIGURATION FILE

       The configuration file format is simple: comments (starting with a hash sign "#") and
       blank lines are ignored.  All other lines have two or three fields on them.  The first is
       the list name and is what innd uses (i.e. the site field of the entry in the newsfeeds
       file).  The second field is the actual e-mail address to send the article to.  The third
       field is optional: it sets the envelope-from address (for instance a list member's
       address; if not set, it defaults to the "news" user).

       In e-mail messages, the To header field body will have the mailing-list address (i.e. the
       second field).  Besides, news2mail strips most article header fields from the article
       before mailing.

       In newsfeeds, the channel feed should look like:

           news2mail!:!*:Ac,Tc,Wn*:<pathbin>/news2mail

       and for each mailing-list, you only have to add to newsfeeds an entry list like:

           list-big-red-ants/lists.ucsd.edu\
               :!*,rec.pets.red-ants\
               :Ap,Tm:news2mail!

       Please note the use of "Ap" and the exclusion of the list owner domain to protect the list
       from feeding back new arrivals from the list.  The site name used in the newfeeds entry
       for a mailing-list (above "list-big-red-ants") must be the same as the first field in an
       entry in news2mail.cf.  For instance:

           # newsfeeds-name   list-to-address      [list-sender-address]
           list-big-red-ants  ants@lists.ucsd.edu  news+ants@news.server.org

FILES

       pathbin/news2mail
           The Perl program itself used to gateway news into e-mails.

       pathetc/news2mail.cf
           The configuration file which specifies the mapping to use for gatewaying.

BUGS

       The news2mail program is set up as a funnelled channel in newsfeeds, implying multiple
       matches should be handled as one - and multiple matching funnelled feeds will result in a
       single call to the script.  Therefore, since only one mail is sent, crossposts are not
       currently properly handled as for the envelope-from address (which then defaults to the
       "news" user).

HISTORY

       news2mail was written by Brian Kantor in 1998.  This man page was written by James Brister
       and converted to POD by Julien Elie.  The third optional field in news2mail.cf was added
       by D. Stussy in 2008.

SEE ALSO

       innd(8), newsfeeds(5).