snget (8)

snget [options] [news.group...]

sngetd [options]

options: [-d] [-hBps] [-pnparallel] [-cdepth] [-mmax]

snget fetches articles for the news.groups on the command line (or all non-local newsgroups if none are specified) from their respective upstream feeds, and stores them in the news spool /var/spool/sn. If a newsgroup could not be fetched for, it may be attempted again. sngetd does the same, except it reads newsgroup names from /var/spool/sn/.fifo and does not exit. sngetd does not fork into the background.

snget does not guarantee to fetch the groups in the order specified on the command line. snget and sngetd will write errors and status messages to descriptor 2.

snget and sngetd are both scheduling wrappers that call /usr/sbin/SNHELLO, snfetch, and snstore. You must own /var/spool/sn or be root in order to run snget and sngetd.

-d

Enable verbosity, may be specified multiple times. This option is also propagated to snfetch and snstore.

-pnparallel

Attempt to fetch for nparallel newsgroups at once. Default is 4, maximum is 8.

-hBps

Throttle the sum of bandwidth used by all snfetches to Bps bytes per second. This option is used to prevent snget or sngetd from hogging the network. By default there is no throttling.

-cdepth

depth is passed to snfetch as the depth of the command pipeline.

-mmax

The very first time contacting the news server, retrieve no more than max articles per newsgroup, default is 200. This option is useful only if there are unprimed newsgroups and has no effect otherwise. The .max file in each newsgroup directory still applies (see snfetch(8)).

-ttimeout

This option is not documented because it is ignored and will disappear in a future release. See .timeout in FILES next.

Server Directories

These are the directories /var/spool/sn/.outgoing/server.name:port, which are symlinked from /var/spool/sn/news.group/.outgoing. If the latter isn't a (symlink to a) directory, snget won't fetch for news.group.

/var/spool/sn/.outgoing/server.name:port/.timeout

If this file exists and contains a number, this is taken to be the timeout in seconds in all dealings with server.name:port. Default is 120 seconds.

/var/spool/sn/.outgoing/server.name:port/.SNHELLO

If this program file exists, it is invoked instead of the default (usually /usr/sbin/SNHELLO) when an NNTP connection is first made to server.name:port in order to read the greeting and upload posted articles. If server.name:port requires a username and password, you would copy the default here and edit that information in.

/var/spool/sn/news.group/{.serial,.max}

snget and sngetd read these files on behalf of snfetch.

Other signals have default behaviour.

SIGUSR1

If -hBps was specified, Bps is halved, else is ignored.

SIGUSR2

If -hBps was specified, Bps is doubled, else is ignored.

See also /usr/sbin/SNHELLO for the list of environment variables exported by snget/sngetd.

SNROOT

If this is set and is not empty, the value is used in place of /var/spool/sn, the default news spool directory.

PATH

To find SNHELLO (if this server does not have a .SNHELLO), snfetch, and snstore. If PATH does not contain /usr/sbin as one of it's components, /usr/sbin is appended to it.

snfetch(8), snstore(8), /usr/sbin/SNHELLO