man(1) Manual page archive


     NETNEWS(5)                                             NETNEWS(5)

     NAME
          netnews - usenet news articles, utility files

     DESCRIPTION
          There are two formats of news articles: A and B.  Format A
          is the only format that the older netnews(A) understands.
          Readnews and postnews(7) deal with both formats, but produce
          B by default.

          Format A looks like this:

          Aarticle-ID
          newsgroups
          path
          date
          title
          body of article

          Format B contains two extra pieces of information:  receipt
          date and expiration date.  A file in B format consists of a
          series of headers and then the body.  A header is a line
          with a capital letter in the 1st column and a colon some-
          where on the line.  Unrecognized header fields are ignored.
          News is stored in whichever format it was created.  The fol-
          lowing fields are among those recognized:

               From:
               Newsgroups:
               Subject:
               Date:
               Date-Received:
               Expires:
               Reply-To:
               References: ID of article this is a follow-up to
               Control: Text of a control message

          Each line of the control file file line has four fields,
          separated by colons:

          system-name:subscriptions:flags:transmission command

          Only the system-name and subscriptions need to be present.

          The system name is the name of the system being sent to.
          The subscriptions are the newsgroups it gets.  The `flags'
          are a set of letters describing how the article should be
          transmitted.  The default is B.  Valid flags include A, B, N
          (use ihave/sendme protocol), U (use `uux -c' and the name of
          the stored article in a `%s' string).

     NETNEWS(5)                                             NETNEWS(5)

          The transmission command is executed by the shell with the
          article to be transmitted as the standard input.  The
          default is uux - -z -r sysname!rnews.

          Somewhere in the control file, there must be a line for the
          host system.  This line has no flags or transmission
          commands. A `#' as the first character in a line denotes a
          comment.

     FILES
          Arlington VA, 1983