plucky (1) delayer.1.gz

NAME

       delayer - A pipe to delay line-based input by a given time

SYNOPSIS

       some-program | delayer [--[no-]buffered] [--delay seconds] [--store filename] -- some-other-program [args
       ...]

       Legacy calling convention:

       some-program | delayer seconds some-other-program [args ...]

DESCRIPTION

       The delayer program implements a delaying pipe.  Lines sent to the standard input of the process are
       spooled, and only printed to the standard input of some-other-program after a certain delay time has
       passed.

       The main use case is for a news feed that deliberately should not distribute articles as soon as
       possible.  One reason is giving cancel control articles and NoCeM messages time to arrive so that innd
       remembers the Message-IDs of those cancelled articles before they actually arrive.  It permits cancelling
       articles before they are locally stored and spread to other peers.  The delay can be set up for outgoing
       feeds wanting that or, even better for not slowing the propagation of articles, internally between a
       frontend instance of innd receiving the articles from all your peers and another local instance of innd
       fed by your frontend with a delay except for cancels and NoCeM articles.

       Another use case is using a link only as a backup.

CONFIGURATION

       The steps to set up a delayed feed using delayer and innfeed are:

       •   Choose a name for that feed, e.g. "innfeed-delayed".

       •   In pathetc, copy innfeed.conf to innfeed-delayed.conf.

       •   Edit innfeed-delayed.conf in pathetc, and change the occurrences of "innfeed" to "innfeed-delayed",
           typically in the log-file, pid-file and status-file parameters.  If these parameters are not set, you
           should explicitly set them in innfeed-delayed.conf so that their default values do not conflict with
           a running instance in parallel of a real-time feed using innfeed.  For instance:

               log-file:    innfeed-delayed.log
               pid-file:    innfeed-delayed.pid
               status-file: innfeed-delayed.status

           Using the same value for backlog-directory in both innfeed.conf and innfeed-delayed.conf is fine
           because the site names in newsfeeds are unique (see below with "news.uu.net" and
           "news.uu.net-delayed").

       •   Possibly limit max-connections to "1".

       •   Only keep in innfeed-delayed.conf the configuration of the peers which should receive a delayed feed.

       •   Add a new entry to newsfeeds in pathetc like:

               innfeed-delayed!\
                   :!*\
                   :Tc,Wnm*,S16384:<pathbin>/delayer --delay 300 -- \
                       <pathbin>/innfeed -c innfeed-delayed.conf

           This will delay articles via that feed for 300 seconds.  If the intent is to give NoCeM messages time
           to arrive, the delay should match the frequency at which they are sent in the news.lists.filters
           newsgroup.

       •   Use "innfeed-delayed!" instead of "innfeed!" in the newsfeeds entries for peers which should receive
           a delayed feed.  If you wish, you can also set up two entries for each peer, keeping a real-time feed
           through "innfeed!" for control articles and NoCeM messages, and delaying the feed of other articles
           through "innfeed-delayed!".

               news.uu.net/uunet\
                   :!*,control,control.*,news.lists.filters\
                   :Tm:innfeed!

               news.uu.net-delayed/uunet\
                   :*,!control,!control.*,@news.lists.filters\
                   :Tm:innfeed-delayed!

           In that case, be sure to use the same "news.uu.net-delayed" peer name in innfeed-delayed.conf.  Note
           that you should only configure a delayed feed for a remote peer if its news administrator agrees with
           that (he may want a real-time feed, or already have locally implemented a delay on his incoming
           feeds).

       •   Reload the newsfeeds configuration file:

               ctlinnd reload newsfeeds 'setting delayed feeds'

OPTIONS

       --buffered, --no-buffered
           By default, output is buffered.  This increases the time until an article is actually sent if the
           number of articles is small.  Disable buffering to have a more accurate delay, at a price of a
           (possibly neglectable) performance overhead.

       --delay seconds
           Delay articles by the given amount of seconds.  Default is "60".

       --store filename
           By default, all buffered lines are written out if the input is closed, even if the configured delay
           has not been reached yet.

           When this flag is used, these lines will be written to the given file instead, to be used upon next
           startup.  Using an absolute path name is recommended.

       -- some-other-program [args ...]
           -- separates the options to delayer from the program the output is written to: some-other-program is
           the full path to the program, optionally followed with some args parameters.

LEGACY OPTIONS

       This interface is considered legacy and will be removed some day.

       delay
           Delay articles by the given amount of seconds.

       some-other-program [args ...]
           The full path to the program the output is written to, optionally followed with some args parameters.

BUGS

       If the standard input is closed (when for instance the feed is closed or restarted), all lines in the
       store are printed immediately, breaking the contract of delaying them, unless the --store option is used.

       If the number of articles in that feed is rather low (just a few articles per delay time or less), some
       effects of buffering will delay the transmission even further.  See the --no-buffering option to
       alleviate this.

HISTORY

       Initial version written in July 1998 by Christian Mock <cm@tahina.priv.at>.

       Improved and documented by Christoph Biedl in January 2024.

SEE ALSO

       delay(1), innfeed.conf(5), newsfeeds(5).