Ubuntu Manpage: mailpost - Feed an e-mail message into a newsgroup

Provided by: inn2_2.7.2~20240212-1build3_amd64

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 (cleaning up some address header fields, removing a few ones like X-Complaints-To and
       X-Trace, and putting "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 set in
       fromhost, pathhost and domain in 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/spool/mailpost -t /tmp -d local local.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, notably 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.  Also,
       mailpost must be executable by that user.

       Instead of /var/spool/mailpost, the mail spool directory can be specified, or any other directory where
       the mailpost process has write access.

       A common practice to gateway a newsgroup to a mailing-list is to create a moderated newsgroup (running
       for instance the command "ctlinnd newgroup local.bicycles.racing m") and set the moderation address for
       this newsgroup in the moderators file in pathetc to the mailing-list address.  If you add an -a flag in
       the above example, then on the one hand, when a message is sent to the mailing-list, mailpost will be
       run, mark it as approved, and the message will directly reach the newsgroup.  On the other hand, when a
       message is posted to the newsgroup, it normally does not have an Approved header field, so it will be
       sent (by nnrpd) to the mailing-list address configured in the moderators file, which means the message
       reaches the mailing-list and, like any other messages posted to the mailing-list, it will be processed by
       mailpost, approved, and finally reach the newsgroup.

OPTIONS

-a addr
If the -a flag is used, addr (which is usually the e-mail address of the poster) is added to the
article as the body of an Approved header field. It is useful if one of the newsgroup to which the
article should be posted is moderated. (Of course, this flag should be added only if you are
supposed to auto-approve your posts.)

Be sure that the reader connection made by inews to post the article is allowed to post approved
articles (see the "A" letter in the access parameter of access blocks in readers.conf).

-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 (notably when it is executed as the mail user). The
default value is pathdb as set in inn.conf.

Make sure the specified location exists and is writable by the user mailpost runs as.

-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 field body 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 the body of the Distribution
header field.

-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 List-ID header field, if such a
header field 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 field body. 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 (notably
when it is executed as the mail user). Two paths are tried by default: pathtmp as set in inn.conf,
and then /var/tmp if pathtmp is not writable.

Make sure the specified location exists and is writable by the user mailpost runs as.

-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.

By default, known header fields are:

Archive
Archived-At
Comments
Content-*
Date
Distribution
From
Injection-Date
Keywords
List-ID
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.

By default, removed header fields are:

X-Complaints-To
X-Trace

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