MAILPOST(8) InterNetNews Documentation MAILPOST(8)
NAME
mailpost - Feed an e-mail message into a newsgroup
SYNOPSIS
mailpost [-hn] [-a addr] [-b database] [-c wait-time] [-d distribution]
[-f addr] [-m mailing-list] [-o output-command] [-p port] [-r addr] [-t
tempdir] [-x header[:header...]] [-z header[:header...]] newsgroups
DESCRIPTION
The mailpost program reads a properly formatted e-mail message from
stdin and feeds it to inews for posting to a news server. newsgroups
is a whitespace-separated list of group names to which to post the
article (at least one newsgroup must be specified).
Before feeding the article to inews, it checks that the article has not
been seen before, and it changes some header fields (cleans up some
address headers, removes a few ones like X-Complaints-To: and X-Trace:,
and puts "X-" in front of unknown header fields). The Received: and
*-To: header fields are also altered to prevent spamming the gateway
(the name of the news server or the domain name from inn.conf are
removed).
If the article has been seen before (mailpost records the message-ID of
each article it handles), then the article will be dropped with a non-
zero error status. Other errors will cause the article to be mailed to
the newsmaster (selected at configure time and defaulting to "usenet").
Normally, mailpost is run by sendmail(8) via an alias entry:
local-mail-wreck-bikes: "|<pathbin in inn.conf>/mailpost
-b /var/tmp -t /var/tmp -d local local.mail.rec.bicycles.racing"
The -b and -t flags are useful to change the directories used by
mailpost by default. As a matter of fact, though it is recommended to
run mailpost as the news user, it is as often as not run as another
user, for instance the mail user. Therefore, you should make sure to
create and set to be writable by the user that mailpost runs as the
directories where to put the database and the temporary files.
Instead of /var/tmp, the mail spool directory can be specified, or any
other directory where the mailpost process has write access.
OPTIONS
-a addr
If the -a flag is used, the value given is added to the article as
an Approved: header.
-b database
If the -b flag is used, then it defines the location of the
persistent database used to store the message-IDs of articles sent
on. This is to prevent articles looping around if a news-to-mail
gateway sends them back here. This option may be required if the
mailpost process does not have write access to the news database
directory. The default value is pathdb as set in inn.conf.
-c wait-time
The -c flag indicates a length of time to sleep before posting. If
duplicate messages are received in this interval (by any instance
of mailpost using the same database), the article is only posted
once, but with Newsgroups: header modified to crosspost the article
to all indicated groups. The units for wait-time are seconds; a
reasonable value may be anywhere from tens to hundreds of seconds,
or even higher, depending on how long mail can be delayed on its
way to your system.
-d distribution
If the -d flag is used, the value given is added to the article as
a Distribution: header.
-f addr
The -f flag is a synonym for the -r flag.
-h Print usage information and exit.
-m mailing-list
If the -m flag is used, the value given is added to the article in
a Mailing-List: header, if such a header doesn't already exist.
-n If the -n flag is used, neither an article is posted nor a mail is
sent in case an error occurs. Everything is written to the
standard output.
-o output-command
Specifies the program to which the resulting article processed by
mailpost should be sent. For debugging purpose, "-o cat" can be
used. The default value is "inews -S -h".
-p port
Specifies the port on which nnrpd is listening, used for article
posting. If given, -p is passed along to inews.
-r addr
A heuristic is used to determine a reasonable value for the Path:
header. The -r flag indicates what to use if no other value can be
determined.
-t tempdir
If the -t flag is used, then it defines the location of the
directory to use to temporarily store error messages that are sent
to the newsmaster. This option may be required if the default
value refers to a path that does not exist or the mailpost process
does not have write access to. Two paths are tried by default:
pathtmp as set in inn.conf, and then /var/tmp if pathtmp is not
writable.
-x header[:header...]
A colon-separated list of additional header fields which should be
treated as known header fields; these header fields will be passed
through to inews without having "X-" prepended.
Known header fields are:
Archive
Archived-At
Comments
Content-*
Date
Distribution
From
Injection-Date
Keywords
Mailing-List
Message-ID
MIME-*
Organization
References
Return-Path
Sender
Subject
Summary
-z header[:header...]
A colon-separated list of additional header fields which should be
removed.
Removed header fields are:
X-Trace
X-Complaints-To
FILES
pathbin/mailpost
The Perl script itself used to feed an e-mail message to a
newsgroup.
pathdb/mailpost-msgid.dir and pathdb/mailpost-msgid.pag
The default database files which record previously seen message-
IDs.
HISTORY
Written by Paul Vixie long ago and then hacked up by James Brister for
INN integration.
$Id: mailpost.in 10171 2017-07-22 14:01:37Z iulius $
SEE ALSO
active(5), inews(1), inn.conf(5), nnrpd(8), uwildmat(3).
INN 2.6.4 2017-07-23 MAILPOST(8)