FETCHNEWS(8)

📦
version 3.12.3 · 5 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💌 FETCHNEWS 💌

ok so bestie, this is the FETCHNEWS(8) page from the Cyrus IMAP docs and I'm gonna walk you through it, no gatekeeping 💅

✨ NAME ✨

fetchnews — Retrieve new articles from peer and feed to Cyrus

like literally that's the whole job. grab the fresh news, hand it over. icon behaviour fr fr 🫶

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

fetchnews [ -C config-file ] [ -s servername[:port]]
    [ -n ] [ -y ] [ -w wildmat ] [ -f tstampfile ]
    [ -a authname [ -p password ]] peername

look at her. all those little brackets are optional, peername is not. the way that -a can drag -p along with it? obsessed 😌

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so fetchnews retrieves news articles from a peer news server and feeds them to a Cyrus server. it connects to the peer you named with peername, asks for new articles since the time stored in tstampfile, and feeds them over to servername. that's the whole loop, bestie 🔁

and where does it get its settings? it reads its configuration options out of the imapd.conf(5) file unless you tell it otherwise with -C. so it's a lil mind reader except it's just reading a file. slay 🎀

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -C config-file — use config-file as the config file instead of the default imapd.conf(5). it's giving "I brought my own settings, thanks" 🫶
  • -s servername, --server=servername — hostname of the Cyrus server (with optional port) where the articles should be fed. defaults to "localhost:nntp" so if you say nothing she just goes home 🏠
  • -n, --no-newnews — don't use the NEWNEWS command. instead, fetchnews keeps track of the high and low water marks for each group and uses those to fetch new articles. different strategy, same mission 💪
  • -y, --yyyy — use 4 instead of 2 digits for the year. and listen, the 2-digit version is RFC 977 — but it's not y2k-compliant. so like… choose wisely bestie 😭
  • -w wildmat, --groups=wildmat — wildmat pattern saying which newsgroups to search for new articles in. defaults to "*" because she's nosy and wants everything 💀
  • -f tstampfile, --newsstamp-file=tstampfile — the file where the timestamp of when articles were last retrieved gets read from and written to. defaults to <configdirectory>/newsstamp as specified by the config options ⏰
  • -a authname, --auth-id=authname — userid to use for authentication 🪪
  • -p password, --password=password — password to use for authentication 🔑

✨ FILES ✨

  • /etc/imapd.conf

that's the one, that's the file, that's where the vibes live 📂

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

go read that one next, it's the lore 🧚

✨ AUTHOR ✨

The Cyrus Team, Nic Bernstein (Onlight) 👑

1993–2026, The Cyrus Team

ngl the -y thing is the real jump scare on this page. 2-digit years are not y2k-compliant, the man page said it, I said it, we're all saying it 💀

and that's the whole page bestie, you ate it up, no cap 🌸✨

version 3.12.3 🌈 dated Jul 15, 2026 🦋 — Cyrus IMAP, mwah, periodt 💖

📦 where this page comes from