SYNOPSIS

       pullnews [-hq] [-c config] [-g groups] [-p port] [-r file] [-s to-
       server] [<from-server> ...]

REQUIREMENTS

       The Net::NNTP module must be installed.  This module is available as
       part of the libnet distribution and comes with recent versions of Perl.
       For older versions of Perl, you can download it from
       <http://www.cpan.org/>.

DESCRIPTION

       pullnews reads a config file in the running user's home directory (nor-
       mally called ~/.pullnews) and connects to the upstream servers given
       there as a reader client.  By default, it connects to all servers
       listed in the configuration file, but you can limit pullnews to spe-
       cific servers by listing them on the command line.  For each server it
       connects to, it pulls over articles and feeds them to the destination
       server via the IHAVE command.  This means that the system pullnews is
       run on must have feeding access to the destination news server.

       pullnews is designed for very small sites that don't want to bother
       setting up traditional peering and is not meant for handling large
       feeds.

OPTIONS

       -c config
           Normally, the config file is stored in ~/.pullnews for the user
           running pullnews.  If -c is given, config will be used as the con-
           fig file instead.  This is useful if you're running pullnews as a
           system user on an automated basis out of cron rather than as an
           individual user.

       -g groups
           Specifies a collection of groups to get.  groups is a list of news-
           groups separated by commas (only commas, no spaces).  Each group
           must be defined in the config file, and only the remote hosts that
           carry those groups will be contacted.  Note that this is a simple
           list of groups, not a wildmat expression, and wildcards are not
           supported.

       -h  Print a usage message and exit.

       -p port
           Connect to the destination news server on a port other than the
           default of 119.  This option does not change the port used to con-
           nect to the remote news servers.

       -q  Print out less status information while running.

       -r file
           Rather than feeding the downloaded articles to a local server,
           instead create a batch file that can later be fed to a server using

       to retrieve.  Only one newsgroup should be listed on each line.

       pullnews will update the config file to include the time the group was
       last checked and the highest numbered article successfully retrieved
       and transferred to the destination server.  It uses this data to avoid
       doing duplicate work the next time it runs.

       The full syntax is:

           <host> [<username> <password>]
                   <group> [<time> <high>]
                   <group> [<time> <high>]

       where the <host> line must not have leading whitespace and the <group>
       lines must.  Note that you may optionally specify a username and pass-
       word for basic authentication to the remote server if necessary.

       A typical configuration file would be:

           # Format group date high
           data.pa.vix.com
                   rec.bicycles.racing 908086612 783
                   rec.humor.funny 908086613 18
                   comp.programming.threads
           nnrp.vix.com pull sekret
                   comp.std.lisp

       Note that an earlier run of pullnews has filled in details about the
       last article downloads from the two rec.* groups.  The two comp.*
       groups were just added by the user and have not yet been checked.

       The nnrp.vix.com server requires authentication, and pullnews will use
       the username "pull" and the password "sekret".

BUGS

       pullnews is very simple and is lacking in more sophisticated features
       (like killing articles based on user-defined conditions) that better
       pull feeders most certainly have. It also doesn't keep or log much
       detail on articles transferred.

HISTORY

       pullnews was written by James Brister for INN.  The documentation was
       rewritten in POD by Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>.

SEE ALSO

       incoming.conf(5)



INN 2.4.3                         2005-12-11                       PULLNEWS(1)