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NEWSFETCH(1)           DragonFly General Commands Manual          NEWSFETCH(1)


NAME

       newsfetch - Pull news from an NNTP server and store in the mailbox
       format.


SYNOPSIS

       newsfetch hostname[:port] [ -clsyvV ] [ -d dirname ] [ -f rcfile ] [ -t
       N ] [ -T Timeout ] [ -w M ] [ -p | -P command ] [ -Y command ] [ -x
       command ]


OPTIONS

       -c If this option is specified, newsfetch will not update .newsfetchrc
       file

       -d dirname directory where newsfetch will store news

       -f rcfile This option tells newsfetch to use an alternate rc file

       -l display name of all the newsgroups on the server and exit

       -s output will be send to stdout instead of file

       -t N time to pause after M articles, in seconds.

       -w M This option tells newsfetch to pause for N seconds after M
       messages to avoid heavy load on server. Time can be set by -t option
       (default is 60 Seconds)

       -T Timeout timeout value in seconds, default is 600 seconds

       -p command Each article will be piped into a user command. The new pipe
       will be created before fetching each article. This is useful for
       filtering the news article using external filter like procmail.  -P
       command This is similar to -p option except for all article will be
       piped at once.  The pipe will be created once before fetching each
       group.

       -y This is similar to -p 'procmail .newsfetchproc' option except that
       .newsfetchproc is generated from .newsfetchfilter or .procmailrc file.
       See generated file .newsfetchproc and procmailrc(5) for more detail

       -Y command This is similar to -p option except that .newsfetchproc is
       generated from .newsfetchfilter or .procmailrc file which can be used
       by an external filter command

       -x command A user command will be executed after fetching each
       newsgroup.  The occurrence(s) of the string %s in the command will be
       replaced by the name of the last fetched newsgroup

       -V Print version and exit


DESCRIPTION

              newsfetch news.yourisp.com
              newsfetch news.yourisp.com -x "command %s"
              newsfetch $NNTPSERVER

       newsfetch pulls news from an NNTP server and writes the articles to a
       file named same as the newsgroup name, stdout or piped into an external
       program. The file created by newsfetch can be used with any mail
       reader.


NEWSFETCHRC

       Newsfetch looks for a file .newsfetchrc to see the articles already
       fetched.  The format of .newsfetchrc is very simple. It consists of one
       line for each newsgroup.  The line contains three fields.  The first
       field is the name of the group.  The next field is the last article
       fetched in the group when that group was last downloaded.  The third
       field limits the number of messages (say N) which can be downloaded at
       any given time (-1 for no limit).  If there are more messages than N,
       only N latest messages are downloaded.  The fields are separated by a
       space.

              comp.os.vxworks 1 100
              comp.dcom.telecom 1 -1

       When Newsfetch is finished, it updates article numbers in the file
       .newsfetchrc.


NEWS FILTERING

       Downloaded News can be filtered by external filter like procmail.
       Newsfetch adds a "Newsfetch: group" header to each articles to ease the
       external filter interface. There are many way to achieve filtering
       using newsfetch using -p, -P, -y or -Y options,

              newsfetch news.yourisp.com -p procmail

       This will pipe each article to procmail.

              newsfetch news.yourisp.com -y

       This will generate a procmail rcfile from .newsfetchfilter or
       .procmailrc and pipe each article into procmail.

              newsfetch news.yourisp.com -Y command

       This will generate a procmail rcfile from .newsfetchfilter or
       .procmailrc and pipe each article into external command which can use
       .newsfetchproc file.

              newsfetch news.yourisp.com -P command

       This will create a pipe to command before fetching each group and pipe
       all downloaded articles.


WEB BASED NEWS INTERFACE

       There is great demand for including the web support for the newsfetch.
       I suggest to use hypermail in combination with newsfetch to make a very
       good web based news interface (see above, option -x and -P).  hypermail
       is available from

       http://www.eit.com/software/hypermail/hypermail.html


FILES

              $HOME/.newsfetchrc
              $HOME/.newsfetchfilter
              $HOME/.newsfetchproc


HISTORY

              Author - Yusuf Motiwala (yusuf@scientist.com)
              http://ulf.wep.net/newsfetch.html
              http://yusuf.home.ml.org


NOTE

       Initially, I wrote this utility for personal use. The current version
       may not have all the features you want, but you are free to modify the
       code for your personal use.  Feedbacks are welcome.

                                                                  NEWSFETCH(1)

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