RNEWS(8)                  UNIX System V(3 March 1991)                  RNEWS(8)


NAME
      rnews, cunbatch - accept and spool news input
      newsspool, newsrun, c7decode - news input spooler and processing
      newsrunning - control news-processing daemon

SYNOPSIS
      rnews
      cunbatch
      /usr/dell/cnews/newsbin/input/newsspool [ -g grade ] [ -i ] [ file ... ]
      /usr/dell/cnews/newsbin/input/newsrun [ grades ]
      /usr/dell/cnews/newsbin/input/c7decode
      /usr/dell/cnews/newsbin/input/newsrunning [on|off]

DESCRIPTION
      Rnews accepts news from standard input and spools it up for processing,
      space permitting.  If space is persistently too short, rnews looks for
      the file /usr/dell/cnews/lib/rnews.stall; if it is present, rnews waits
      patiently for more space to appear, while if it is absent, rnews discards
      the news and reports this.

      Cunbatch is a historical synonym for rnews; there is no difference in
      what they do.

      Newsspool is the actual spooling program.  It copies the input file(s)
      (standard input default) to a file in the input-spooling directory
      /var/spool/news/in.coming, stripping off any `#! cunbatch' or
      `#! c7unbatch' header as it does so.  The filename is based on the
      current time, plus a suffix classifying the file by type (compressed,
      c7encoded, or plain text), plus a possible prefix denoting the one-digit
      numeric grade (if the -g option is given; rnews does not use this
      option).  If invoked with the -i option, when finished newsspool attempts
      to start newsrun to process the new news immediately.  Rnews invokes it
      this way if and only if the file /usr/dell/cnews/lib/rnews.immed exists.

      Newsrun should be run periodically (e.g. by cron(8)) to process spooled
      news.  Newsrunning can be used to turn newsrun's processing off and on if
      it is desired to avoid major news processing during certain hours.
      `newsrunning off' instructs any currently-running newsrun to stop as soon
      as possible, and prevents later ones from running.  (This is a slight
      oversimplification; see the discussion of grades below.)  `newsrunning
      on' removes the inhibition (but does not actually start a new newsrun).
      Without an argument, newsrunning reports the current status:  ``off'' or
      ``on''.

      Newsrun checks for the stop file that newsrunning off creates, verifies
      that there is enough disk space for processing, and then starts
      processing spooled news.  News is processed in order by grade:  if the
      name of the spooled file starts with a digit followed by a period, the
      digit is the file's grade.  Files without a grade are considered to have
      a grade just after grade 9.  Lower-numbered grades are processed first,
      with processing within a grade in chronological order.



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RNEWS(8)                  UNIX System V(3 March 1991)                  RNEWS(8)


      If newsrun is invoked with a grades argument, that specifies the grades
      to be processed.  A grades argument can be a single grade (`1'), a list
      (`123'), or a range (`1-5').  In the absence of the argument, newsrun's
      default is all grades if there is no stop file present, and just grade 0
      if there is a stop file.  If a stop file appears during processing,
      newsrun will stop processing all but grade 0 and will exit when there is
      no grade-0 news left.

      Each batch is run through c7decode (if necessary), decompressed (if
      necessary), and then fed to relaynews.  (Files that lack a classification
      suffix, typically because they arrived by some means other than
      newsspool, are tried first as compressed and then as plain text.)  If
      relaynews fails, newsrun reports this (by mail to usenet) and attempts to
      save the spooled batch in the bad subdirectory for human inspection.  To
      bound the accumulation in bad in the event of some systematic problem,
      newsrun limits bad to 50 files; this default can be changed by placing a
      limit file in bad, containing one ASCII line with the desired numeric
      limit.  A limit of 0 will prevent saving of bad batches.

      C7decode passes standard input to standard output, decoding a complex and
      bizarre encoding of 8-bit data as printable ASCII characters.

FILES
      (All in /var/spool/news/in.coming)

      000000000 (etc.) unclassified ungraded spooled news
      000000000.Zungraded compressed spooled news
      000000000.tungraded plain-text spooled news
      000000000.7ungraded compressed c7encoded spooled news
      1.000000000.Zgrade 1 compressed spooled news, etc.
      stop      newsrun disable file
      bad       directory for failed news
      bad/limit limit on number of files in bad

SEE ALSO
      compress(1), newsbatch(8), newsmail(8), relaynews(8)

DIAGNOSTICS
      Complaints are mailed to usenet if something goes wrong.

HISTORY
      Part of C News.  Written at University of Toronto by Henry Spencer.

BUGS
      C7decode should be part of the underlying transport mechanism.  It hasn't
      been tested very well in the C News environment.  Bdecode (see
      newsmail(8)) is probably better for most uses.

      Relaynews is a bit too enthusiastic about declaring batches bad, so
      things end up in bad for no terribly good reason.  Actually, it's rare
      for the contents of bad to be very interesting.



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      The grading mechanism relies slightly on collating sequence, and in
      particular on `.' collating before the digits.




















































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