FETCHNEWS(8)

💌 FETCHNEWS(8) — Cyrus IMAP, bestie edition

okay so you found yourself in section 8 of the Cyrus IMAP manual, and honestly? slay. this page is all about fetchnews, and no cap it's giving "little courier that could" 🧚

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✨ NAME ✨

fetchnews — Cyrus IMAP documentation, but make it a rescue mission: it retrieves new articles from a peer and feeds them to Cyrus. 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

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

like, yes, that's a lot of brackets. it's fine. we'll get through it together 🫶

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🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

okay so fetchnews pulls news articles from a peer news server and feeds them straight into a Cyrus server. it connects to the peer you name with peername, asks for every article newer than the timestamp sitting in tstampfile, and feeds all of them to servername. main character energy from a tiny relay program, honestly 🔥

and where does it get its settings? fetchnews reads its configuration options out of the imapd.conf(5) file — unless you tell it otherwise with -C. yes bestie, it will go looking on its own if you don't stop it.

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💖 OPTIONS 💖

• -C config-file — use this specific configuration file config-file instead of the default imapd.conf(5). you're the boss 💅
• -s servername, --server=servername — hostname of the Cyrus server (with optional port) where the articles should get fed. defaults to "localhost:nntp". cute little default, love that for us 🌸
• -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 them to fetch new articles. different strategy, same queen energy 👑
• -y, --yyyy — use 4 instead of 2 digits for the year. heads up: 2-digits are what RFC 977 says, but they are not y2k-compliant. so like... a relic 🫠
• -w wildmat, --groups=wildmat — wildmat pattern specifying which newsgroups to search for new articles. defaults to "*" — everything, all of it, no crumbs 🌈
• -f tstampfile, --newsstamp-file=tstampfile — the file where it reads/writes the timestamp of when articles were last retrieved. defaults to <configdirectory>/newsstamp as specified by the configuration options. it's literally keeping receipts 📝
• -a authname, --auth-id=authname — userid to use for authentication. hi, identity! 💜
• -p password, --password=password — password to use for authentication. keep it secret, keep it safe, don't paste it into the group chat 🙈

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🦋 FILES 🦋

• /etc/imapd.conf

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

• imapd.conf(5) — manpage:imapd.conf(5). go read it, iykyk 📖

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🌟 AUTHOR 🌟

The Cyrus Team, Nic Bernstein (Onlight) — iconic behavior from the whole crew, fr fr 👑

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💀 COPYRIGHT 💀

1993–2026, The Cyrus Team

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a lil PSA from your girl: -y is keeping 2-digit years alive out of legacy habit, and those 2-digit years are not y2k-compliant. so like... know that before you ship it, bestie 😭

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k that's the whole page, and the version situation is 3.8.8 dated Sep 09, 2026 — Cyrus IMAP, section FETCHNEWS(8). go off, you understood the assignment 🎀✨