NAME
applyfilter - apply filter settings to news spool
SYNOPSIS
applyfilter [-v] ... newsgroup
DESCRIPTION
Leafnode is a USENET package intended for small sites, where there are
few users and little disk space, but where a large number of groups is
desired.
Applyfilter is the program to apply filter settings to your newsspool,
particularly after changes that were not in effect at the time the
articles were downloaded with fetchnews. Applyfilter is used if you
want to remove postings from your spool matching a certain filter
pattern (see FILES below). If the headers of an article match any of
the filtering rules, the article is being deleted from the newsgroup.
Applyfilter sets its real and effective uid to "news".
OPTIONS
-v Be verbose.
newsgroup
is the newsgroup you want to apply the filter to.
FILES
A file specified in the filterfile option of /etc/news/leafnode/config
contains the set of filtering rules that are applied to the newsspool.
Each rule must be on a separate line. Empty lines and comments (marked
by a # which MUST be at the beginning of the line) are allowed and will
be ignored.
Each line contains a regular expression that will be compiled with the
PCRE_MULTILINE option set (unless it is a comment line or an empty
line). Every regular expression applied to the whole message header
(folded message headers are unfolded before the match is attempted).
If any regular expression matches the header, the posting gets removed.
For example, the following set of rules will delete all crosspostings
to alt.flame.
^Newsgroups:.*[, ]alt.flame$
^Newsgroups:.*[, ]alt.flame,
^Newsgroups: indicates that the pattern should only be applied to the
Newsgroups: header. After the header, an arbitrary number of characters
may follow, ending in either a comma or a space. After that, alt.flame
must be in the line, either at the end of the line (first entry) or in
the middle of the line, followed by other newsgroups (second entry).
Unfortunately, regular expressions are a complex matter and outside the
scope of this document. Please see the manual pages provided with the
PCRE library for details.
Note that some leafnode programs (such as fetchnews) feed the header
line by line to the regexp (after unfolding), others (such as
applyfilter) feed the whole header in one large blob. This does not
usually matter because patterns are compiled in multiline mode, but
will matter if you’re trying to match multiple headers in the same
regexp -- this would work with applyfilter, but not with fetchnews.
ENVIRONMENT
LN_LOCK_TIMEOUT
This variable is parsed as an unsigned integer value and
determines how many seconds applyfilter will wait when trying to
obtain the lock file from another leafnode program. 0 means to
wait indefinitely. This variable takes precedence over the
configuration file.
AUTHOR
Copyright 1999 by Cornelius Krasel <krasel@wpxx02.toxi.uni-
wuerzburg.de>.
Copyright 2002 - 2006 by Matthias Andree <matthias.andree@gmx.de>.
Leafnode was originally written by Arnt Gulbrandsen <agulbra@troll.no>
and is copyright 1995-96 Troll Tech AS, Postboks 6133 Etterstad, 0602
Oslo, Norway, fax +47 22646949.
SEE ALSO
pcrepattern(3), leafnode(8), fetchnews(8), texpire(8).