Ubuntu Manpage: batcher - Article batching for InterNetNews

Provided by: inn2_2.7.2~20240212-1build3_amd64

NAME

       batcher - Article batching for InterNetNews

SYNOPSIS

       batcher [-rv] [-a articles] [-A total-articles] [-b size] [-B total-size] [-i string] [-N batches] [-p
       process] [-s separator] host [input]

DESCRIPTION

       batcher reads a list of files and prepares news batches for the specified host.  It is generally used to
       prepare UUCP feeds, but the resulting batches can be used by any application that uses rnews(1) to inject
       the articles.  It is normally invoked by a script run out of cron that uses shlock to lock the host,
       followed by ctlinnd to flush the batch file.  See send-uucp(8) for a front-end for batcher.

       batcher reads the file input, or standard input if no file is given.  If input is a relative file name,
       it is assumed to be in pathoutgoing as set in inn.conf.  Blank lines and lines starting with a number
       sign ("#") are ignored.  All other lines in the input should consist of one or two fields separated by a
       single space.  The first field is the storage API token of an article.  The second field, if present,
       specifies the size of the article in bytes.

       By default, batches are written to standard output (which isn't very useful if more than one batch is
       output), but see the -p option.

OPTIONS

-a articles
This flag limits the number of articles included in each batch. The default is no limit. A new
batch will be started when either the total bytes or the number of articles written exceeds the
specified limits.

-A total-articles
Limits the total number of articles written for all batches. As soon as the total number of articles
written to batches reaches or exceeds total-articles, all additional articles in the input will be
deferred. The default is no limit.

-b size
This flag sets the size limit for each batch; as soon as at least this much data has been written
out, a new batch will be started. The default size is 60 KB. Using "-b 0" will allow unlimited
batch sizes.

-B total-size
Limits the total number of bytes written for all batches. As soon as the total bytes written to
batches reaches or exceeds total-size, all additional articles in the input will be deferred. The
default is no limit.

-i string
A batch starts with an identifying line to specify the unpacking method to be used on the receiving
end. When this flag is used, string, followed by a newline, will be output at the start of each
batch. The default is to have no initial string (under the assumption that either the processor
specified with the -p flag or some other later process will add the appropriate line).

-N batches
Limits the total number of batches written. As soon as the number of batches written reaches or
exceeds batches, all additional articles in the input will be deferred. The default is no limit.

-p process
By default, batches are written to standard output, which is not useful when more than one output
batch is created. If this option is given, each batch will instead be fed via a pipe to the shell
command process. The process argument must be an sprintf(3) format string, which may have a single
"%s" parameter that will be replaced with the host name.

A common value is:

( echo '#! gunbatch' ; exec gzip -c ) | uux - -r -z %s!rnews

which generates gzip-compressed batches and feeds them to uux.

-r By default, batcher reports errors to pathlog/errlog. To suppress this redirection and report errors
to standard error, use the -r flag.

-s separator
Each article in a batch starts with a separator line that indicates the size of the article.
separator must be an sprintf(3) string, which may have a single "%ld" in the string that will be
replaced with the size of the article. If the separator is not empty, a newline will also be
appended to it when it is added to the beginning of each article.

The default separator is:

#! rnews %ld

and this should rarely be changed.

-v Upon exit, batcher reports statistics via syslog. With this flag, the statistics will also be
printed to standard output.

EXIT STATUS

       If the input is exhausted and all batches are created successfully, batcher will exit with a zero status.

       If any of the limits specified with -A, -B, or -N flags are reached, or if there is an error in writing a
       batch, batcher will try to spool the remaining input by copying it to a file as follows:

       • If there was no input filename, the remaining input will be copied to pathoutgoing/host.

       • If  an  input  filename  was  given,  the  remaining  input will be copied to a temporary file named by
         appending ".bch" to the end of input (and qualified by adding pathoutgoing if input  was  not  a  fully
         qualified  path).  If this happens successfully, batcher will then try to rename this temporary file to
         input (thus replacing input with a copy of itself with  all  of  lines  for  the  successfully  batched
         articles removed).

       Upon  receipt  of  an  interrupt or termination signal, batcher will finish batching the current article,
       close the batch, and then rewrite the batch file as described above.

HISTORY