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researchv10 Dan Cross

.TH NETNEWS 5
.CT 1 inst_info
.SH NAME
netnews \- usenet news articles, utility files
.SH DESCRIPTION
.PP
There are two formats of news articles:
A and B.
Format A is the only format that the older
.IR netnews (A)
understands.
.I Readnews
and
.IR postnews (7)
deal with both formats, but produce B
by default.
.PP
Format A looks like this:
.LP
.BI A article-ID
.br
.I newsgroups
.br
.I path
.br
.I date
.br
.I title
.br
.I body of article
.br
.LP
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 somewhere on the line.
Unrecognized header fields are ignored.
News is stored in whichever format it was created.
The following fields are among those recognized:
.IP
.EX
From:
Newsgroups:
Subject:
Date:
Date-Received:
Expires:
Reply-To:
References: \fRID of article this is a follow-up to\fP
Control: \fRText of a control message\fP
.EE
.LP
Each line of the control file
.F /usr/lib/news/sys
file line has four fields, separated by colons:
.LP
.IB system-name : subscriptions : flags ":\fItransmission command\fP"
.PP
Only the
.I system-name
and
.I subscriptions
need to be present.
.PP
The
.I system name
is the name of the system being sent to.
The
.I subscriptions
are the newsgroups it gets.
The
.L flags
are a set of letters describing how the article should be transmitted.
The default is
.BR  B .
Valid flags include
.BR A ,
.BR B ,
.B N
(use ihave/sendme protocol),
.B U
(use
.L uux -c
and the name of the stored article in a
.L %s
string).
.LP
The
.I transmission command
is executed by the shell with the article to be transmitted as the standard
input.
The default is
.BI "uux \- \-z \-r " sysname !rnews .
.LP
Somewhere in the control 
file, there must be a line for the host system.
This line has no
.IR flags
or
.I transmission commands.
A 
.L #
as the first character in a line denotes a comment.
.SH FILES
.TF /usr/spool/netnews/*
.TP
.F /usr/lib/news/*
.TP
.F /usr/spool/news/*
.SH SEE ALSO
.IR postnews (7),
.IR readnews (7)
.br
M. Horton,
.I 
Standard for the Interchange of USENET Messages,
RFC850,
DARPA Information Processing Techniques Office,
Arlington VA,
1983

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