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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] [-x
       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 headers (cleans up some address
       headers, removes X-Trace: and X-Complaints-To:, and puts "X-" in front
       of unknown headers).

       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 -d local local.mail.rec.bicycles.racing"

       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
           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 temporary directory.
           The default value is pathtmp 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.

       -x header[:header...]
           A colon-separated list of additional headers which should be
           treated as known headers; these headers will be passed through to
           inews without having "X-" prepended.

           Known headers are:

               Approved
               Content-*
               Date
               Distribution
               From
               Mailing-List
               Message-ID
               MIME-*
               References
               Return-Path
               Sender
               Subject

FILES

       pathbin/mailpost
           The Perl script itself used to feed an e-mail message to a
           newsgroup.

       pathtmp/mailpost-msgid.dir and pathtmp/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 9025 2010-03-21 16:49:41Z iulius $

SEE ALSO

       active(5), inews(1), inn.conf(5), nnrpd(8), uwildmat(3).