NAME

     rnews - receive news from a UUCP connection

SYNOPSIS

     rnews [ -h host ] [ -v ] [ -U ] [ -N ] [ -S master ] [ input
     ]

DESCRIPTION

     Rnews reads messages typically queued by a UUCP newsfeed and
     sends them to the local InterNetNews server.  The message is
     read from the specified input file, or standard input if  no
     input is named.

     When sent over UUCP, Usenet articles are typically joined in
     a  single  batch  to  reduce the UUCP overhead.  Batches can
     also be compressed, to reduce the communication time.  If  a
     message  does  not  start  with a number sign (``#'') and an
     exclamation point, then the entire input is taken as a  sin-
     gle  news  article.   If  it  does start with with those two
     characters, then the first line is read and interpreted as a
     batch command.

     If the command is ``#! rnews nnn'' where nnn  is  a  number,
     then  the  next  nnn bytes (starting with the next line) are
     read as a news article.

     If the command is ``#! cunbatch'' then the rest of input  is
     fed  to  the  compress(1)  program  with  the ``-d'' flag to
     uncompress it, and the  output  of  this  pipe  is  read  as
     rnews's input.  This is for historical compatibility - there
     is no program named cunbatch.  A compressed batch will start
     with  a ``#! cunbatch'' line, then contain a series of arti-
     cles separated by ``#! rnews nnn'' lines.

     If the command is any other word, then  rnews  will  try  to
     execute   a   program   with  that  name  in  the  directory
     /usr/local/news/bin/rnews.libexec.  The batch  will  be  fed
     into  the  program's standard input, and the standard output
     will be read back as input into rnews.

OPTIONS

     -S   If the ``-S'' flag is used, then rnews will connect  to
          the  specified  host.  If the flag is not used, it will
          try to connect to the server by opening  a  Unix-domain
          stream  connection.  If that fails, it will try to open
          a TCP connection to the default remote server.

     -U   If the server is not available, the message is  spooled
          into  a  new file created in the /news/in.coming direc-
          tory.  The ``-U'' flag may be used to send all  spooled
          messages to the server once it becomes available again,
          and can be invoked regularly by cron(8).

     -N   Normally, if unpacking the input fails it is re-spooled
          to  /news/in.coming  for another attempt later.  If the
          ``-N'' flag is used then no such  re-spooling  is  done
          and  rnews  exits  with  status value ``9'' to indicate
          this.

     -v   If the ``-v'' flag is used, it will print a  notice  of
          all errors on the standard error, naming the input file
          (if known) and printing the first few characters of the
          input.  Errors are always logged through syslog(3).

     -h   If the ``-h'' flag  is  given,  or  failing  that,  the
          enviroment  variable UU_MACHINE is set, then rnews will
          log the Message-ID, and host, for each article  offered
          to the server via syslog(3).  Logging will only be done
          if the value is not an empty string.

BUGS

     Rnews cannot process articles that  have  embedded  \0's  in
     them.

HISTORY

     Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for  InterNetNews.
     This is revision 1.23, dated 1996/11/08.

SEE ALSO

     innd(8).