NAME

mknf, rmnf, nfxmit, nfrcv, nfarchive, newsinput, newsoutput − notesfile utility programs

SYNOPSIS

mknf [ −aon ] topic [ ... ]

rmnf [ −f ] topic [ ... ]

nfxmit −dsite [ −r ] [ −a ] [ −f file ] topic [ ... ]

nfrcv topic fromsystem

nfarchive [ −n ] [ −d ] [ −f file ] topic [ ... ]

newsinput

bnewsinput

newsoutput [ −a ] [ −f file ] topic [ ... ]

DESCRIPTION

mknf, rmnf, nfxmit, nfrcv, nfarchive, newsinput, bnewsinput, and newsoutput are the utility programs provided with the notesfile system.  They provide the capabilities to create and remove notesfiles, update intersystem notesfiles, archive old notes, and perform gateway activity between news(1) and the notesfile system. 

mknf and rmnf create and delete notesfiles respectively.  The same parameters apply for each: the ‘topic’ is the name that the notesfile is known by.  As mknf processes its arguments, creating new notesfiles, the name of each new notesfile is echoed to the terminal.  The new notesfiles are closed and the notesfile owner is made the sole director.  He customarily turns control over to the user requesting the notesfile by making that person a director.  The −aon options apply to mknf only.  They signify that the notesfiles created are to permit anonymous notes, be open, and be networked respectively. 

rmnf asks for verification of each notesfile before deleting it.  The notesfile is deleted if the response line begins with a ‘y’.  If the −f option is specified the verification is bypassed.  Only the notesfile owner is allowed to run mknf and rmnf. 

Network transmission of notesfiles is accomplished using nfxmit and nfrcv.  Nfxmit sends the specified notesfiles to site.  The −r option specifies that a request should be queued for the remote site to transmit updates from its copies of the notesfiles sent.  Specify −a to have articles which originated in news(1) sent.  News(1)-originated articles will usually reach each system via the news program.  A timestamp of the last transmission of each notesfile to each system is maintained. This is used for determining the notes to send.  The −r option is used only if the other site does not automatically queue updates of the notesfile. 

Specify −f myfile on the command line to have nfxmit read myfile for a list of notesfiles to be sent.  This is useful if the number of notesfiles is too numerous to list on a single command line.  The shell meta-characters ∗, ?, [, and ] are recognized in both the topic parameter and the entries in myfile. 

Nfxmit uses uux(I) to invoke nfrcv on the remote system in order to process the incoming notes.  Non-uucp connections are also supported (e.g. rsh in 4.1c BSD). 

Nfarchive is used to archive notes that have not been modified in a certain amount of time.  The −n parameter gives the number of days that a note must be unmodified before being eligible for archival.  The archived notes are stored in a ‘generic’ format in a separate directory where they are available for later retrieval.  The −f parameter is similar to that of the nfxmit parameter of the same name.  The −d parameter tells nfarchive that the eligible notes should be deleted only; they are not placed into the archives. 

To transfer from news(1) to notesfiles, arrange to have the news distribution program forward articles it receives to newsinput or bnewsinput.  Newsinput parses the A news protocol for intersystem transfer.  Bnewsinput parses the B news protocol.  See the Notesfile Reference Manual for more detail on how to establish this connection. 

Newsoutput takes several arguments.  The −a option specifies that notesfile originated articles from other systems can be sent to news; the default is that only locally written articles are passed to news.  Use the −f option to specify a file which contains a list of notesfiles to process.  The rest of the command line contains notesfiles whose new articles are spooled to news. 

The file ‘/usr/spool/notes/.utilities/newsgroups’, if present, contains mapping functions between notesfiles and newsgroups.  The mapping permits several newsgroups to be tied to a notesfile.  The file format is:

notesfile:newsgroup

More information on this feature can be found in The Notesfile Reference Manual. 

BUGS

The archiver does not have a matching unarchiver. To recover unarchived notes, one has to feed the archive into the nfrcv program. 

If several systems sharing a common notesfile all decide to run newsoutput with the −a option for that notesfile, duplicate articles may appear in the news(1) system. 

Newsinput is naive about parsing author names. In particular it gets confused with mixtures of UUCP and ARPA addressing. 

The news/notes software puts lines into news articles which start "#:". Some mail programs dislike this, even though it comes after the blank line which separates the header from the text.  Once large numbers of the sites running news have the release which passes unrecognized header lines, a change will be made to move the line into the headers.  This should make many people happier. 

FILES

/usr/spool/notes/.utilities where most of these programs live. 

/usr/spool/notes/.utilities/newsgroups mapping between notesfiles and newsgroups

/usr/spool/notes/.utilities/net.how specifies connection methods between systems

/usr/spool/notes/.utilities/net.alias directory containing mapping of local and remote notesfile names

SEE ALSO

news(1), notes(1), nfcomment(3), uucp(1),
The Notesfile Reference Manual

AUTHORS

Ray Essick (uiucdcs!essick, uiucdcs!notes)
Rob Kolstad (uiucdcs!kolstad)
Department of Computer Science
222 Digital Computer Laboratory
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
1304 West Springfield Ave.
Urbana, IL 61801

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University of Illinois  —  3 August 1983