nlpatch(8)

✨ nlpatch(8) — the FTN mailer glow-up you didn't know you needed ✨

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, and let me tell you about nlpatch, a lil tool from the FTN mailer world. yes the manual name is nlpatch(8) and yes it's giving very "old school internet but make it iconic" 💅

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🌸 NAME 🌸

nlpatch — it patches a nodelist. that's it. that's the whole vibe. 🦋

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🌈 SYNOPSIS 🌈

nlpatch [-h] [-x verbosity] [-I file] nodelist nodediff

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

Nlpatch patches a nodelist. no cap, that's literally the entire description the original gives us, and honestly? respect the brevity. main character energy ✨

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -h — shows you a short help message. your little "what do I do now" button, we love her 🫶
• -x Verbosity — sets the debug verbosity. Verbosity can be either:
  • a number from 0 to 32, which sets the 'on' bits from 1 up to that number, or
  • a string of letters, where 'a' = bit 1, 'b' = bit 2, etc., all the way up to bit 26.

so you got choices, bestie, pick your fighter 💅

• -I File — use the alternate configuration file File instead of the usual one. swapping the fit, love that for you 💖

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⭐ RETURN CODES ⭐

when nlpatch exits, it leaves you a lil note. here's the tea:

• 0 — Successfull (yes, with the double l — that's the original spelling, and we are not touching it, periodt 💀)
• 1 — command line usage error. you said something it didn't understand 🙈
• 2 — cannot open some files
• 3 — could not read some files
• 4 — CRC error 😭
• 5 — unknown command line
• 6 — diff does not match old list

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🔥 DEBUG VERBOSITY 🔥

so when you crank up -x, these are the lil letters you can turn on, and what each one is watching. iykyk 👑

• d — lock files
• f — aka matching
• g — outbound directories
• h — call
• j — session handshake
• k — file transfer
• l — filelist
• m — nodelist flags
• r — modem
• t — nodelist index
• z — hydra protocol

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🧚 FILES 🧚

• $IFLIBDIR/config — the runtime configuration file. yes, $IFLIBDIR is an environment variable, she's doing the heavy lifting 💜
• nodelist.??? — a list of nodes in an FTN network. the ??? is not me being mysterious, that's literally the filename pattern bestie 🌸

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

ifmail(8), ifpack(8), ifunpack(8), iftoss(8), mgetty(8), getty(1)

go read those too, they're the rest of the friend group 💖

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👑 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 👑

the lore!! okay so:

• Some ideas were taken from the Fidogate/RFmail package, written by Teemu Torma and hacked by Martin Junius.
• Some tcp code was taken from the JE version, written by Tsuneo Tanaka <ttan@twics.com>.
• 1993, 1994 Eugene Crosser
• This is free software. You can do what you wish with it as long as this copyright notice is preserved. (that part is not optional bestie, keep the receipt 🫶)
• Manpage and dbz-nodelist-index support by Christof Meerwald <cmeerw@mail.htl.fh-sbg.ac.at>
• Many thanks to the institute of computer science in Salzburg/Austria and especially to Anton Hofmann <hofmann@wst.edvz.sbg.ac.at> who made further work possible during his lecture. shoutout to Anton, absolute legend 🌈

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💀 real talk though: this page is from version 3.0.cm.alpha-2, dated May 29, 1997, under the FTN mailer banner. ancient. iconic. still valid. that's the vibe check, and she passed ✨

and that's the whole page, bestie — go patch that nodelist 💅🎀💖