NNTPGET(1)

💌 NNTPGET(1) — the InterNetNews documentation era 💌

okay so real talk, this is the manual page for nntpget, and it lives over in the InterNetNews docs, bestie. buckle up, it's actually so much simpler than it looks 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

nntpget — grab Usenet articles from a remote NNTP server, no cap 🌸

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

nntpget [-ov] [-f file] [-n newsgroups] [-t timestring] [-u file] host

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So nntpget connects to the NNTP server at whatever host you point it at and pulls articles from it. the Message-IDs of the articles you want get read in from standard input, and then the articles themselves get sent out to standard output. that's the whole vibe ✨

but like, instead of reading Message-IDs from standard output (that's literally what the manpage says, i'm just the messenger 💀), the -f, -n, -t and -u options make use of the NEWNEWS command — which, heads up, may not even be available on the remote server. so vibe check your server first 👑

only one of -f, -t or -u may be given at the same time. and -n can only be specified if one of those other three options is in use. we love a dependency 🫠

if authentication credentials are present for the remote server in the passwd.nntp file in pathetc, then nntpget will use them to authenticate. she logs in, she slays 💅

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🌈 OPTIONS 🌈

• -f file — normally the list of article Message-IDs is read from standard input. but if you use this option, a NEWNEWS command is used to retrieve all articles newer than the modification date of the specified file. lowkey genius.
• -n newsgroups — if either the -f, -t or -u options are used, then this option may be used to limit the responses to only the newsgroups (if any) whose names match the list. the default is *, which is to say all newsgroups are wanted. the newsgroups list can contain several patterns and wildmat characters. for instance misc.*,!*.test is a valid list that will be given to the NEWNEWS command. iconic filtering behavior fr fr 🔥
• -o — this option may be used only if the command is executed on the host where the innd server is running. if you do use it, nntpget connects to the specified remote host to retrieve articles. any article not present in the local history database is then fetched from the remote site and offered to the local server. and listen — articles are not written to standard output here. only processed Message-IDs are, and only if the -v option is also used. so don't come crying to me when your stdout is empty 😭
• -t timestring — if this option is used, then the specified timestring is used as the time and date parameter to the NEWNEWS command. only the articles that arrived in the remote server since that timestamp are retrieved. ⏰

the timestring is specified as yyyymmdd hhmmss GMT where yyyy is the year, mm the month, dd the day of the month, hh the hours in the 24-hour clock, mm the minutes, and ss the seconds. the token GMT specifies that the date and time are given in Coordinated Universal Time. yes it's mm twice, that's the original, don't @ me 🙈

• -u file — this one is like -f except that if the transfer succeeds, the file will be updated with a statistics line, modifying its timestamp so that it can be used in later invocations. self-updating file, main character energy honestly ⭐
• -v — if this option is used with -o, then the Message-ID of each article will be sent to standard output as it is processed. little running commentary, we love to see it 💖

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🧚 HISTORY 🧚

written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews. rewritten into POD by Julien Elie. legends only 👑

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💜 SEE ALSO 💜

innd(8), passwd.nntp(5)

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ok that's the whole page bestie, go get those articles 💅✨

INN 2.7.4 · 2022-07-10 — mwah, that's the version and date, mwah 💋🎀