IFTOSS(8)

✨ NAME ✨

iftoss — bestie, this is the one that turns Fidonet FTN packets into RFC-822 and RFC-1036 mail/news 💌

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

iftoss [-h] [-N] [-x verbosity] [-I file]

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

okay so listen. iftoss converts Fidonet netmail packets into RFC-822 internet mail or RFC-1036 Usenet News. it wants a non-arcmail packet on stdin (yes, stdin, it's giving pipe energy) and then it passes the converted mail messages and/or generated newsbatch over to sendmail and/or rnews. if you hit it with -N, the resultant messages/newsbatches don't go to sendmail/rnews at all — they go chill in the directory "/tmp/ifmail" instead. lowkey iconic.

the ifmail and iftoss programs try to preserve as much information as possible in "X-FTN-..." headers and "^ARFC-..." kludges, and they restore messages more or less accurately to their original form when double-gatewaying. so nothing gets lost in the vibe transfer, periodt.

if you make a system mail alias file accessible to the iftoss program, it makes an attempt to "backward resolve" the "from" addresses. like, if the originating address of the FidoNet message matches the right side of some mail alias, then the "Reply-To:" header of the generated mail/news message will contain the "alias@your.domain.name" address. she's doing detective work fr fr 🔍

message IDs get converted like this, pay attention bestie:

• "^AMSGID: <address> <hexnum>" becomes "<decimalnum>@<address>".
• if there was no MSGID in the fidonet message, a messageid of the form <creation-time>@<from-address> is generated — so that when a single message is gatewayed in several distinct places, it will have the same messageid anyway (for some (little) risk of having two different messages with the same messageid).
• RFC822 Message-IDs are converted back when they can be, otherwise the messageid "<local>@<domain>" is converted to "^AMSGID <domain> crc32(<local>)".
• when an RFC message is split, unique MSGIDs are generated for all parts after the first one.
• in any case, the original "Message-ID:" header is preserved in the "^ARFC-Message-ID:" kludge and used if the message comes back to usenet on some (other) gateway.

she really said "no detail left behind" and honestly? we stan 💖

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -h — displays a short help message. the little "hey bestie here's the tea" flag 🫶
• -N — put resutant messages/newsbatch to /tmp/ifmail, and do not invoke sendmail/rnews. it's the "im not sending this anywhere, just leaving it here" option 💅
• -x verbosity — set the debug verbosity. verbosity may be a number from 0 to 32 to set 'on' bits from 1 to number, or a string of letters where 'a' = bit 1, 'b' = bit 2, etc. up to bit 26. choose your own adventure, literally ✨
• -I File — use the alternate configuration file File. swapping the config like it's an outfit change 👑

🦋 FILES 🦋

• $IFLIBDIR/config — the runtime configuration file. that's her home base 🌸

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

ifcico(8), ifpack(8), ifunpack(8), ifmail(8) — the whole friend group, go say hi 🫶

👑 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 👑

some ideas taken from the Fidogate/RFmail package, written by Teemu Torma and hacked by Martin Junius. some modeules taken from the INN package. thanks to Michael Bravo <mbravo@tctube.spb.su> (who was the first) and many others for testing. absolute legends, no cap 💜

1993, 1994 Eugene Crosser

this is free software. you can do what you wish with it as long as this copyright notice is preserved. slay, just keep the receipt 🧾✨

and that's the whole page bestie — brought to you by the 4th Berkeley Distribution 🎀, filed under IFTOSS(8), manual name and all. go gateway something iconic 💖🦋