IN.HOSTS(5)

💖 IN.HOSTS 💖

okay bestie, so this is the in.hosts page from section 5 of the File Formats Manual — aka the manual for file formats. no cap. let's get into it 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

in.hosts — the newsx incoming host state, and yes it's exactly as iconic as it sounds 💅

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so the in.hosts directory is where all the state info lives for the incoming news streams that newsx(8) goes and fetches for you. it's giving backstage pass energy — it's literally the record of where everything's at ✨

for every single incoming news source, there has to be a /var/spool/news/inhosts/spoolname file. that file is the one describing what the latest article is that's been fetched from that particular host. one file per host, no mixing, we do not share ✋

now here's the vibe check on your options:

• if you just want all the news articles in all the groups defined at your local server — do nothing 🧚 let the file construct itself automatically, she's self-sufficient, we love that for her
• if you want other choices, like using multiple cron(8) entries plus newsx(8) end tags to control when certain newsgroups get fetched, or using .newsrc article numbers so you don't refetch articles you've already seen — then you gotta set up the in.hosts file for the server by hand. yes, manually. i know. 😭

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🎀 the file format (it's simple, i promise) 🎀

• Blank lines? comments. lines starting with a #? also comments. we're not reading those, bestie 💤
• Lines starting with a : are a tag for use with the newsx -e (end tag) option ✨
• Otherwise, each line is a newsgroup name and the first unread article number, separated by whitespace. it's giving group number and nothing more
• and if there's no article number, that's the same as zero, which means all available articles on the server will be read. zero = give me everything, main character energy 👑

important, fr fr: there is one unique file belonging to each remote newsserver, and they should not be mixed. keep them separate, do not cross the streams 💀

one more thing that's lowkey a lifesaver: if you're switching from reading news via an NNTP newsreader over to fetching with newsx, you can use an existing .newsrc file directly as the initial /var/spool/news/inhosts/spoolname file. no conversion, no drama, just plug it in 🌈

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✨ FILES ✨

• /var/spool/news/inhosts/spoolname — the incoming host state file. there should be one of these per external news server. one per server, periodt 💅
• /var/spool/news/inhosts/spoolname.tmp — the incoming spool, temporary (it exists while news is being pulled) 🦋
• /var/spool/news/inhosts/spoolname.old — the previous generation of the external host state file. her throwback era 🙈
• /var/spool/news/in.hosts/spoolname.conf — standard profile for a specific newsspool. see newsx.conf(5) for the file format ✨

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💜 AUTHOR 💜

Egil Kvaleberg <egil@kvaleberg.no> — shoutout to the icon who wrote this 👑

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🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

• newsx(8)

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🎀 this was IN.HOSTS from section 5 of the File Formats Manual — mwah, obsessed, go read newsx(8) next 💖✨🌸