rnews(8)

📦 version 2.0.0.alpha20140727b, in nixos 26.05

💅 rnews(8) — the leafnode one, bestie

okay so real talk, this is a page from the leafnode manual, and we're gonna get through it together. it's giving "niche but iconic" energy and honestly? we love her for it. 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

rnews — sorts batch files into the spool. that's the whole gig. she sorts. she files. she slays. 🗂️

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

rnews [GLOBAL OPTIONS] [file|directory]

that's it. that's the whole vibe check. 💖

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so leafnode is a USENET package, and it's made for the small sites — like, the ones with only a couple of users and barely any disk space, but who still want a huge number of groups. she's the "small but mighty" of newsservers, no cap. 👑

rnews is the program that sorts files — possibly ones you received with UUCP — into your newsspool. like, it takes your pile of chaos and makes it ✨organized✨. she can currently take:

  • compressed news batches (more on that below 👀)
  • uncompressed "rnews" news batches
  • plain old news articles

and the way she does it is lowkey genius: rnews avoids copying the file around and is able to read from a stream. to pull that off, she may fork() twice and spawn an external decompressor. two forks, one girlboss. 🔥

🫶 INPUT 🫶

rnews expects the news batch in a file, in a directory, or on standard input. so like, flexible queen.

if you hand her the name of a directory, she'll open it up and sort all the files inside that directory into the news spool. but bestie, hear me — rnews will not recursively descend through directories. it's one level and that's it, she's not going spelunking. 🙈

oh and also: rnews sets its real and effective uid to "news" (or whatever else was configured). identity theft but make it sysadmin. 💅

🧚 COMPRESSED BATCH FORMATS (UNBATCH) 🧚

rnews recognizes cunbatch, gunbatch and zunbatch, and will feed either through gzip -c -d. (yes, all three of them, same treatment. equal opportunity decompression.) 🍓

rnews also recognizes bunbatch, and will feed it through bzip2 -c -d. 💜

⚠️ these formats are not run-time configurable. like, at all. to add/change this behaviour you gotta modify rnews.c, recompile and reinstall. yes, actually touching the source. we're getting our hands dirty, babes. 😭

💀 OPTIONS 💀

for a description of the GLOBAL OPTIONS, see leafnode(8). go read your other manpage, i believe in you. 📖

  • file — sort this file into the newsspool. the file can also be an rnews batch, optionally compressed. (multitasking icon 💅)
  • directory — sort the contents of all files in this directory into the newsspool. all of them. she's thorough. ✨

🐛 BUGS 🐛

okay so this is the one tea we have to spill: rnews leaks some bytes of memory. 😭 specifically the command line arguments to the external compressor program. it's a little leak, it's fine, it's a personality trait at this point. ngl though, it's still a bug, so like — noted. 📝

👑 AUTHOR 👑

written and Copyright 1999 by Cornelius Krasel <krasel@wpxx02.toxi.uni-wuerzburg.de>.

written and Copyright 2002 by Ralf Wildenhues <ralf.wildenhues@gmx.de>.

written and Copyright 2000 - 2005 by Matthias Andree <matthias.andree@gmx.de>. Manpage updated in 2008 by Matthias Andree.

three whole legends on one manpage, we literally have to stan. 🫶🌈

alright bestie, that's the whole page — no notes, she ate and left no crumbs. 💖✨ this little gem is from leafnode, version 2.0b8_ma10post3.3-CVS, and yes, it's the rnews(8) manual. go forth and sort your batches. 🎀🦋⭐

📦 where this page comes from