knewsd - a tiny nntp demon

knewsd [ options ]

Knewsd is intended to be used with knews(1) to read news (in)directly from the spool directory or even from a mail folder hierarchy. It reads NNTP commands from standard input and writes replies to standard output. The following commands are implemented:

ARTICLE [number]
BODY [number]
HEAD [number]

Return the head and/or body of the current or the specified article. Message-id lookups are not supported.

GROUP newsgroup Enters the given newsgroup.

HELP Gives a list of the implemented commands.

LIST [active | newsgroups] Lists the active file or the newsgroups file.

NEXT Changes the current article pointer to the next article

POST Post an article via the specified posting agent. If none has been specified, the reply will be '440 Posting not implemented.'

QUIT Makes knewsd exit.

STAT number Sets the current article pointer.

XOVER range Returns the overview data for the specified range of articles.

Knewsd implements the 'xover' command either by using the overview files if present, or creating overview records on the fly, or a combination of both if the overview file is incomplete. In the latter case, if the -update flag is given, knewsd will update the overview files.

There is no need to spell out the entire option name, it is sufficient to give a unique prefix, such as -a for -active.

-spool directory

This is the spool directory. It must be specified, either at compile time or at run time.

-active file

This is the active file containing the newsgroups and the high and low article counts. If this is not specifed, knews must be told not to try to read the active file.

-newsgroups file

This is the newsgroups file containing the group descriptions. It's entirely optional.

-overview dir

This can be used if the overview files reside in a different directory hierarchy than the spool directory.

-update

If this is set, knewsd will (try to) update any incomplete overview files it encounters. Not a good idea if you're reading a system wide spool directory.

-postingagent agent

If this is set, the 'agent' will be used to post articles. A possible agent is 'exec inews -h'. This command is interpreted by the shell, and it is important that it is exec'ed, so that knewsd may kill it on a broken pipe to prevent posting of duplicate or truncated articles. Knewsd will warn about this on startup.

This software is Copyright 1995, 1996 by Karl-Johan Johnsson.

knews(1), inews(1)