Provided by: gup_0.5.15build1_amd64 
NAME
gup - A Group Update Program that accepts commands by mail to edit a newsgroup subscription file for
subsequent use by news systems such as INN and C-News.
SYNTAX
gup [-hvP] -a active_path [-d home_directory] [-l log_path]
[-m reply_headers] [-n newsgroups_path]
[-s sites_directory] [-M Mail_command]
DESCRIPTION
The sole purpose of gup is to automate the tedious process of editing group selection patterns defined in
the news configuration files (eg: ``newsfeeds'' for INN and ``sys'' for C-News).
Gup is of use to news administrators who spend an inordinate amount of time editing their news config
files at the behest of the sites they feed. In fact, once gup is installed, it is quite likely that
manual edits of your ``newsfeeds'' or ``sys'' file will become a thing of the past.
Gup is designed to be installed as a mail-server program that is fed an inbound mail via stdin. Gup is
usually invoked from a .forward file. Eg:
"|/.../bin/gup -options...."
Each site has an entry in the ``config'' file containing password and mail address details and a group
selection file called ``groups'', see CONFIG, and GROUPS for more details.
The news administrator of each site mails commands to gup. There are commands to include and exclude
group patterns, list the current patterns for that site and list the available newsgroups; see COMMANDS,
for more details.
The results are normally mailed back to the site's configured administrator. However under some
circumstances, the results are mailed to the originator or the local administrator; see PROCESSING, for
further details.
Gup does not directly change the news system's control files (eg, ``newsfeeds'' for INN). Instead a
trivial shell script must be run to concatenate all of the changed ``groups'' files together into an
appropriately formatted file for your particular news system. (One is provided in the source kit for
INN).
Since each site has to be specifically configured in gup's ``config'' file, access can be restricted to
administrator's capable of managing their own group patterns.
OPTIONS
Options can appear in any order on the command line. The most important point to note is that all of the
paths and directories defined will normally be absolute paths unless you are intimately familiar with the
way in which gup changes directories as it processes a mail (the possible exception here is the
Sites_directory).
-a active_path
The path of the active file for your news system. Before accepting any newsgroup identified in a
command, gup validates the group against the active file. The command is rejected if no match is
found.
-d home_directory
Defines gup's home directory. Gup changes to this directory as soon as possible after starting
up. If this option is not present, the current directory is used. Gup looks for the ``config''
file in it's home directory.
-h Print out a help message showing the command line options, then exit.
-l log_path
A record of all significant requests are written to this file. If the path is relative, then it
will be relative to gup's home directory; see the -d option). Gup must be able to write to this
file. If the -l option is not used, then gup uses stderr. This is useful for testing purposes,
but is unlikely to be of use in a .forward file.
-m reply_headers
When gup generates a mail response it only generates the ``To: '' header line. This option
defines the path of a file that contains other RFC882 conformant header lines that are piped to
the mail program (see the -M option). In fact, if this file contains a body following the
headers, then that will precede any text generated by gup. If this path is not an absolute path,
then it will be treated as relative to gup's home directory (see the -d option).
-M Mail_command
Gup pipes the rfc822 headers and the body of the mail to the nominated mail program. Normally,
this is configured when gup is installed, but it can be over-ridden with this option. The mail
command must be able to determine the recipient addresses from the rfc822 headers.
-n newsgroups_path
If present, the newsgroups file is used to try and find a matching description of newsgroup when
listed.
-P Do not prune superfluous patterns from a site's ``groups'' file. Before writing the updated
``groups'' file, gup applies a fairly rigorous test to the patterns, pruning any nonsensical or
un-necessary patterns. This pruning process can be quite CP intensive to the extent that it may
have a deleterious effect on your system - thus the ability to disable it.
-s Sites_directory
Each site's ``groups'' and ``exclude'' file are located in a unique directory for each site. These
site directories are located in the directory defined with this option. If this is given as a
relative path then it will be relative to gup's home directory (see the -d option). Gup will try
and create this directory if it does not exist.
-v Print out the version number and various compile-time variables, then exit.
COMMANDS
Gup scans the body of the mail for commands. Blank lines are ignored and any data after the ``#''
character is considered a comment. No continuation is allowed. Many of the commands accept a pattern as a
parameter. This pattern is identical to the format of the wildmat() pattern; see wildmat (3) ). In
fact, Gup purposely uses the wildmat routine from INN to ensure that the pattern matching characteristics
are identical.
Valid commands are:
site sitename password
This must be the first command in the mail. sitename and password must match an entry in the
``config'' file. Only one site command is allowed per mail. Aliases: "open" and "host".
quit This command stops gup from processing the rest of the mail. This is useful if your mail User
Agent tends to automatically append a signature file to your mail. Alias: "q".
include pattern
The pattern is checked against the active file. If it matches at least one newsgroup, the pattern
is placed at the end of the site's ``group'' file as an include entry. Only one pattern per
include command is allowed. If the pattern matches anything in the site's exclusion list (see
EXCLUSIONS) then the include will fail. Aliases: "+" and "inc".
exclude pattern
The pattern is checked against the active file. If it matches at least one newsgroup, the pattern
is placed at the end of the site's ``group'' file as an exclude entry. Only one pattern per
exclude command is allowed. Aliases: "-" and "exc".
poison pattern
If the pattern matches at least one crossposted newsgroup the article will not be accepted even if
allowed by an include statement. Only one pattern per poison command is allowed.
help Generate a small help message that briefly describes each command. There is an implied quit with
the help command so there is no point in placing commands after the help command. Alias: "h".
list list all of the current include and exclude patterns in the sites ``groups'' file. The output is
in a format suitable for feeding back into gup at a later stage if need be. Alias: "l".
delete pattern
Delete all include, exclude and poison patterns in the site's ``groups'' file that match the
pattern. ``delete *'' is an effective way of clearing all current patterns.
newsgroups pattern
This command lists out all available newsgroups from the active file that match the pattern. The
list includes the description from the newsgroups file as well as an indication if the site is
currently subscribed to that group. Only one pattern per newsgroups command is allowed. Alias:
"news".
PROCESSING
Gup has a number of processing stages. The initialization stage consists of changing to the home
directory (see the -d option) and opening the logfile (see the -l option). At this time, gup sets the
tentative reply-to mail address to the ``backstop'' mail address defined when gup was compiled (typically
the local news administrator).
The next stage consists of scanning the inbound mail, noting interesting mail headers. The most
interesting ones are "To:" and "Reply-To:". When a "To:" header is found it becomes the tentative reply-
to mail address. If a "Reply-To:" header is found it over-rides any "To:" address to become the new
tentative reply-to mail address. A few others are noted and logged to help track changes.
After all the headers have been processed, the body of the mail is examined for commands. The first
command must be the site command. Any other data results in an error mail sent to the tentative reply-to
mail address. If the site command contains a name that matches an entry in the ``config'' file, then the
tentative reply-to mail address is replaced with the mail address in the ``config'' file.
The reason for these contortions with tentative reply-to mail addresses is simply to deal with the
problem of working out who to send a mail to in the event of an error. Ideally they should all go back to
the mail address in the ``config'' file, but that information is not known for quite a significant part
of gup's initial processing.
Once a valid site command has been accepted, gup changes to that site's directory in Sites_directory (see
the -s option) making the Sites_directory and site's directory as necessary. The site's directory name is
the same as the site's name. In the absence of the -s option this will be:
$HOME/sites/$site
Where $HOME is gup's home directory and $site is the name of the site being processed. Gup locks the
site then loads the site's current ``groups'' file and any xclusion list if present (see EXCLUSIONS for
more details).
From this point on gup accepts any command in any order until either the end of the mail, a quit command
a help command or a serious error during processing. After all commands have been processed, gup
update's the site's ``groups'' file if changes have been made. This update includes pruning any
superfluous patterns (unless the -P option is used). Gup writes the new patterns to ``groups.new''. It
then renames ``groups'' to ``group.old'' and finally renames ``groups.new'' to ``groups''. The result of
all this processing is mailed to the site administrator defined in the ``config'' file.
CONFIG
Access to gup is controlled by the ``config'' file in gup's home directory (see the -d option). This
file contains one line per site. Each line contains three white-space separated tokens. The site's name,
password and mail address of the administrator. Blank lines are allowed and comments follow the ``#''
character. Gup uses a very simple tokenizer, thus no quoting or continuation is allow in this file.
The site name and password are used to check an inbound site command. The password can be crypted or in
plain-text so permissions should be carefully set to restrict access. Here's an example of a ``config''
file.
werple Fert5566a__$1 andrew@werple.apana.org.au
torps 34fkr_&&11)Zz zaph@torps.apana.org.au
uunet R_S_1@@*(A-\ news@uunet.uu.net
.test flapper markd
Hopefully this is intuitively obvious...
GROUPS
Each site has it's own file of patterns. This file is called ``groups'' and is located in the site's own
directory below the Sites_directory (see the -s option). This file contains one pattern per line.
Exclusion lists have a preceding ``!'' character. Here's an example:
apana.*
!apana.lists.*
!apana.fido.*
!apana.vortex.*
alt.bbs.waffle
alt.cult-movies
alt.galactic-guide
alt.sport.bowling
aus.*
!aus.ai
!aus.religion
!aus.radio
!aus.stats.s
...
Normally this file should only be changed by gup, but assuming you cater for locking, there is no reason
why some other process cannot change it too. Whenever gup has to apply changes, it renames this file to
``groups.old'' prior to re-writing the ``groups'' file. This gives you some measure of recovery.
EXCLUSIONS
For whatever reason, you may wish to exclude particular groups from a site's selection list. You can do
this by creating the file ``exclude'' in the site's directory. This file contains newsgroup patterns, one
per line, that are used to filter the ``active'' file when verifying group patterns. The effect of this
is that gup believes that such groups do not really exist, therefore a site cannot possibly include them.
DIAGNOSTICS
All error conditions are record in the log file and possibly the resultant mail - depending on the nature
of the error. A particular problem that is hard to detect is when the .forward file invokes gup
incorrectly. If gup is not invoked due to such an error, then notification depends on the mailer. This
should only be a problem to watch out for when first installing gup.
RESTRICTIONS
Gup does not understand ``Distribution patterns''. Any such patterns must be generated and maintained
independently of gup.
BUGS
Gup does not know when the popen(1) fails when Mail_command is invoked. This is a limitation of popen(1).
If the Mail_command is bogus, then the error will be pretty obscure and dependent on your mailer. stderr
is redirected to the logfile prior to invoking the Mail_Command so hopefully /bin/sh (used by popen) has
generated an appropriate message.
HISTORY
Gup Version 0.3, dated 26 July, 1993.
Initially created by Mark Delany <markd@bushwire.apana.org.au>.
Numerous enhancements and optimizations by Andrew Herbert <andrew@werple.apana.org.au>.
Currently maintained by Marco d'Itri <md@linux.it>.
The wildmat.c is taken directly from the INN sources, written by Rich Salz <rsalz@osf.org>.
The rfc822.[ch] parsing routines are taken directly from the newsgates sources, also written by Rich Salz
<rsalz@osf.org>.
SEE ALSO
newsfeeds(5), sendmail(8)
25 July 1993 GUP(1)