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filechan - file-writing backend for InterNetNews
filechan [
-d directory ] [ -f fields ] [ -m mapfile ] [ -p pidfile ]
Filechan
reads lines from standard input and copies certain fields in each line
into files named by other fields within the line. Filechan is intended to
be called by innd(8)
as a channel feed. (It is not a full exploder and does
not accept commands; see newsfeeds(5)
for a description of the difference
and buffchan(8)
for an exploder program.)
Filechan input is interpreted
as a set of lines. Each line contains a fixed number of initial fields,
followed by a variable number of filename fields. All fields in a line are
separated by whitespace. The default number of initial fields is one.
For
each line of input, filechan writes the initial fields, separated by whitespace
and followed by a newline, to each of the files named in the filename fields.
When writing to a file, filechan opens it in append mode and tries to lock
it and change the ownership to the user and group who owns the directory
where the file is being written.
- -f
- The ``-f'' flag may be used to specify
a different number of initial fields.
- -d
- By default, filechan writes its
output into the directory <pathoutgoing in inn.conf>. The ``-d'' flag may be used
to specify a directory the program should change to before starting.
- -p
- If
the ``-p'' flag is used, the program will write a line containing its process
ID (in text) to the specified file.
If filechan is invoked with ``-f 2'' and
given the following input:
news/software/b/132 <1643@munnari.oz.au> foo uunet
news/software/b/133 <102060@litchi.foo.com> uunet munnari
comp/sources/unix/2002 <999@news.foo.com> foo uunet munnari
Then the file foo will have these lines:
news/software/b/132 <1643@munnari.oz.au>
comp/sources/unix/2002 <999@news.foo.com>
the file munnari will have these lines:
news/software/b/133 <102060@litchi.foo.com>
comp/sources/unix/2002 <999@news.foo.com>
and the file uunet will have these lines:
news/software/b/132 <1643@munnari.oz.au>
news/software/b/133 <102060@litchi.foo.com>
comp/sources/unix/2002 <999@news.foo.com>
Because the time window in which a file is open is very small, complicated
flushing and locking protocols are not needed; a mv(1)
followed by a sleep(1)
for a couple of seconds is sufficient.
- -m
- A map file may be specified by
using the ``-m'' flag. Blank lines and lines starting with a number sign (``#'')
are ignored. All other lines should have two host names separated by a colon.
The first field is the name that may appear in the input stream; the second
field names the file to be used when the name in the first field appears.
For example, the following map file may be used to map the short names
above to the full domain names:
# This is a comment
uunet:news.uu.net
foo:foo.com
munnari:munnari.oz.au
Written by Robert Elz <kre@munnari.oz.au>, flags added by Rich $alz
<rsalz@uunet.uu.net>. This is revision 1.6, dated 1998/04/09.
buffchan(8)
,
inn.conf(5)
, innd(8)
, newsfeeds(5)
.
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