MAILPOST(8)



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)

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