NNTPSEND(8)

🌸 NAME 🌸

nntpsend — send Usenet articles to remote sites. bestie, yes, this is the NNTPSEND(8) page from InterNetNews Documentation, and it's all about feeding articles to a remote NNTP site without losing your mind. 💖

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

nntpsend [-acDdlNnpr] [-P portnum] [-s size] [-T timelimit] [-t timeout]
[-w delay] [sitename fqdn] ...

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Okay so nntpsend is a front-end that invokes innxmit to send Usenet articles to a remote NNTP site. The sites to be fed may be specified by giving sitename fqdn pairs on the command line. If no such pairs are given, nntpsend defaults to the information given in the nntpsend.ctl config file.

The sitename should be the name of the site as specified in the newsfeeds file. The fqdn should be the hostname or IP address of the remote site. An innxmit is launched for sites with queued news. All innxmit processes are spawned in the background and the script waits for them all to finish before returning. Output is sent to the file nntpsend.log in pathlog.

In order to keep from overwhelming the local system, nntpsend waits five seconds before spawning each child. ⏳

nntpsend expects that the batch file for a site is named sitename in pathoutgoing. To prevent batch files corruption, shlock is used to "lock" these files. When sitename fqdn pairs are given on the command line, any flags given on the command completely describe how innxmit and shrinkfile operate. When no such pairs are given on the command line, then the information found in nntpsend.ctl becomes the default flags for that site. Any flags given on the command line override the default flags for the site. 🔒

An alternative to nntpsend can be innduct, mentioned in the innfeed(8) man page. iykyk 🧚

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -D — sends output to stdout instead of the log file nntpsend.log in pathlog.
• -d — does the same as -D, and also passes -d to all innxmit invocations, which in turn causes innxmit to go into debug mode. 🐛
• -n — tells nntpsend not to use shlock to lock the use of nntpsend. Batch files will still be locked.
• -s size — invokes shrinkfile to perform a head truncation of size bytes on the batch file, and the flag will be passed to it. ✂️
• -w delay — makes nntpsend wait for delay seconds after flushing the site before launching innxmit.
• -a — passed on to the child innxmit program.
• -c — passed on to the child innxmit program.
• -l — passed on to the child innxmit program.
• -N — passed as the -s flag to the child innxmit program.
• -P portnum — passed on to the child innxmit program.
• -p — passed on to the child innxmit program.
• -r — passed on to the child innxmit program.
• -T timelimit — passed on to the child innxmit program.
• -t timeout — passed on to the child innxmit program.

See innxmit(8) for more details. 📚

Heads up, bestie: if the -p flag is used, then no connection is made and no articles are fed to the remote site. It is useful to have cron(8) invoke nntpsend with this flag in case a site cannot be reached for an extended period of time. 💀

🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

With the following nntpsend.ctl config file:

nsavax:erehwon.nsavax.gov::-t60
group70:group70.org::
walldrug:walldrug.com:4m-1m:-T1800 -t300
kremvax:kremvax.cis:2m:

the command nntpsend will result in the following:

Sitename        Truncation      innxmit flags
nsavax          (none)          -a -t60
group70         (none)          -a -t180
walldrug        1m if >4m       -T1800 -t300
kremvax         2m              -t180

The command nntpsend -d -T1200 will result in the following:

Sitename        Truncation      innxmit flags
nsavax          (none)          -a -d -T1200 -t60
group70         (none)          -a -d -T1200 -t180
walldrug        1m if >4m       -d -T1200 -t300
kremvax         2m              -d -T1200 -t180

The command nntpsend -s 5m -T1200 nsavax erehwon.nsavax.gov group70 group70.org will result in the following:

Sitename        Truncation      innxmit flags
nsavax          5m              -T1200 -t180
group70         5m              -T1200 -t180

Important vibe check: remember that -a is always given when there is no size limit, and -t defaults to "180". periodt. ✨

🦋 HISTORY 🦋

Written by Landon Curt Noll <chongo@toad.com> and Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews. Converted to POD by Julien Elie. 👑

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

inn.conf(5), innxmit(8), newsfeeds(5), nntpsend.ctl(5), shlock(8), shrinkfile(1).

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mwah 💋 — this page is brought to you by INN 2.7.4, dated 2025-05-09, and it's the NNTPSEND(8) manual. bye bestie, go feed those sites 🫶💖