testhost1
Test the status of an nntp news server
Usage
testhost hostname
[{-a | -n
date
time | -o}]
[-M]
[{-s | -S
filename}]
[{-e | -E
filename}]
[-N
port_number]
[-U
userid]
[-P
password]
[-Q]
[-l
phrase_file]
[-T
timeout]
[-d]
[-q]
[-z]
Options
-a Get the active list from hostname
-d
This option tells testhost get the descriptions of the newsgroups on the remote server by sending the 'list newsgroups' command. The remote server may or may not support this command.
-e | -E filename
These options will send all error messages (normally displayed on stderr), to an alternate file. The lower case version, -e, will send the error messages to the compiled-in default defined in suck_config.h. The default is suck.errlog. The upper case version, -E, requires the filename parameter. All error messages will then be sent to this file.
-l phrase_file
This option tells testhost to load in an alternate phrase file, instead of using the built-in messages. This allows you to have testhost print phrases in another language, or to allow you to customize the messages without re-building. See the "FOREIGN LANGUAGE PHRASES" in suck.1 for more details.
-n date time
Get the newgroups created on the host since the date and time specified. The date must be in YYMMDD format and the time must be in HHMMSS format.
-N port_number
This option will tell testhost to use an alternate NNRP port number when connecting to the host, instead of the default, 119.
-q
This option tells testhost to not display the connection and announcement messages, rather only display the results of the actual command run.
-s | -S filename
These options will send all status messages (normally displayed on stdout), to an alternate file. The lower case version, -s, will send the status messages to the compiled-in default defined in suck_config.h. The default is /dev/null, so no status messages will be displayed. The upper case version, -S, requires the filename parameter. All status messages will then be sent to this file.
-T
This option overrides the compiled-in TIMEOUT value. This is how long testhost waits for data from the remote host before timing out and aborting.
-U userid
-P password
These two options let you specify a userid and password, if your NNTP server requires them.
-Q
This option tells testhost to use the environment variable NNTP_USER & NNTP_PASS to specify a userid and password, if your NNTP server requires them. This option is provided so that the userid & password can't be seen with the ps command, a potential security problem.
-z
This options tells testhost to use SSL to talk to the remote server, if testhost was compiled with SSL.
Overview
Testhost will query a NNTP news server, specified by hostname.
The hostname may optionally include the port number in the form Host:Port.Iftheportnumberisincluded,theportnumberspecified by the -N option will be ignored.
The default action is to issue the help command to the server, to see what software it is running and what commands it accepts.
If the -a option is used, testhost will display the server's active history list. If the -n date time option is used, testhost will display all new groups created on the server since the date and time specified. If the -o option is used, then testhost will display the overview format, which is what the XOVER command returns.
If the -M option is used, the command will be preceded with the "mode reader" command, which might be needed by some servers.
Exit status
0 on success, -1 on failure.
Releases
17 releases since Debian 1.1 (Buzz); the text changed 6 times.