Ubuntu Manpage: innfeed, imapfeed - Multi-host, multi-connection, streaming NNTP feeder

NAME

       innfeed, imapfeed - Multi-host, multi-connection, streaming NNTP feeder

SYNOPSIS

       innfeed [-ChmMvxyz] [-a spool-dir] [-b directory] [-c config-file] [-d log-level] [-e bytes] [-l logfile]
       [-o bytes] [-p pid-file] [-s command] [-S status-file] [file]

DESCRIPTION

       innfeed implements the NNTP protocol for transferring news between computers.  It handles the standard
       IHAVE protocol as well as the CHECK/TAKETHIS streaming extension.  innfeed can feed any number of remote
       hosts at once and will open multiple connections to each host if configured to do so.  The only
       limitations are the process limits for open file descriptors and memory.

       As an alternative to using NNTP, INN may also be fed to an IMAP server.  This is done by using an
       executable called imapfeed, which is identical to innfeed except for the delivery process.  The new
       version has two types of connections: an LMTP connection to deliver regular messages and an IMAP
       connection to handle control messages.

       Used in conjunction with delayer(8), innfeed can send a delayed feed to remote peers or to another local
       instance of innd, notably to permit the rejection of spam before it actually arrives.

MODES

innfeed has three modes of operation: channel, funnel-file and batch.

Channel mode is used when no filename is given on the command line, the input-file keyword is not given
in the config file, and the -x option is not given. In channel mode, innfeed runs with stdin connected
via a pipe to innd. Whenever innd closes this pipe (and it has several reasons during normal processing
to do so), innfeed will exit. It first will try to finish sending all articles it was in the middle of
transmitting, before issuing a QUIT command. This means innfeed may take a while to exit depending on
how slow your peers are. It never (well, almost never) just drops the connection. The recommended way
to restart innfeed when run in channel mode is therefore to tell innd to close the pipe and spawn a new
innfeed process. This can be done with "ctlinnd flush feed" where feed is the name of the innfeed
channel feed in the newsfeeds file.

Funnel-file mode is used when a filename is given as an argument or the input-file keyword is given in
the config file. In funnel-file mode, it reads the specified file for the same formatted information as
innd would give in channel mode. It is expected that innd is continually writing to this file, so when
innfeed reaches the end of the file, it will check periodically for new information. To prevent the
funnel file from growing without bounds, you will need to periodically move the file to the side (or
simply remove it) and have innd flush the file. Then, after the file is flushed by innd, you can send
innfeed a SIGALRM, and it too will close the file and open the new file created by innd. Something like:

innfeed -p <pathrun in inn.conf>/innfeed.pid my-funnel-file &
while true; do
sleep 43200
rm -f my-funnel-file
ctlinnd flush funnel-file-site
kill -ALRM `cat <pathrun>/innfeed.pid`
done

Batch mode is used when the -x flag is used. In batch mode, innfeed will ignore stdin, and will simply
process any backlog created by a previously running innfeed. This mode is not normally needed as innfeed
will take care of backlog processing.

CONFIGURATION

innfeed expects a couple of things to be able to run correctly: a directory where it can store backlog
files and a configuration file to describe which peers it should handle.

The configuration file is described in innfeed.conf(5). The -c option can be used to specify a different
file, and -b to specify a different backlog directory. The backlog-* keys in the configuration file
parameterize the behaviour of backlogging. For each peer (say, "foo"), innfeed manages up to 4 files in
the backlog directory:

• A foo.lock file, which prevents other instances of innfeed from interfering with this one.

• A foo.input file which has old article information innfeed is reading for re-processing.

• A foo.output file where innfeed is writing information on articles that could not be processed
(normally due to a slow or blocked peer). Every backlog-rotate-period seconds, innfeed checks whether
it is not empty, and, if no foo file exists and foo.input is empty, will then rename foo.output to
foo.input and start reading from it.

• A foo file that is never created by innfeed, but if innfeed notices it when checking every backlog-
newfile-period seconds, it will rename it to foo.input at the next opportunity (every backlog-rotate-
period seconds if foo.input is empty) and will start reading from it. This lets you create a batch
file and put it in a place where innfeed will find it.

You should never alter the foo.input or foo.output files of a running innfeed. The format of these last
three files is one of the following:

/path/to/article <message-id>
@token@ <message-id>

This is the same as the first two fields of the lines innd feeds to innfeed, and the same as the first
two fields of the lines of the batch file innd will write if innfeed is unavailable for some reason.
When innfeed processes its own batch files, it ignores everything after the first two whitespace
separated fields, so moving the innd-created batch file to the appropriate spot will work, even though
the lines have extra fields.

The first field can also be a storage API token. The two types of lines can be intermingled; innfeed
will use the storage manager if appropriate, and otherwise treat the first field as a filename to read
directly.

innfeed writes its current status to the file innfeed.status (or the file given by the -S option). This
file contains details on the process as a whole, and on each peer this instance of innfeed is managing.

If innfeed is told to send an article to a host it is not managing, then the article information will be
put into a file matching the pattern innfeed-dropped.*, with part of the file name matching the pid of
the innfeed process that is writing to it. innfeed will not process this file except to write to it. If
nothing is written to the file, then it will be removed if innfeed exits normally. Otherwise, the file
remains, and procbatch can be invoked to process it afterwards.

SIGNALS

       Upon receipt of a SIGALRM, innfeed will close the funnel file specified on the  command  line,  and  will
       reopen it (see funnel file description above).

       innfeed  with  catch  SIGINT and will write a large debugging snapshot of the state of the running system
       into a file named innfeed.snapshot in pathlog.

       innfeed will catch SIGHUP and will reload both the config and the log  files.   See  innfeed.conf(5)  for
       more details.

       innfeed will catch SIGCHLD and will close and reopen all backlog files.

       innfeed will catch SIGTERM and will do an orderly shutdown.

       Upon  receipt  of a SIGUSR1, innfeed will increment the debugging level by one; receipt of a SIGUSR2 will
       decrement it by one.  The debugging level starts at zero (unless the -d option it used), in which case no
       debugging information is emitted.  A larger  value  for  the  level  means  more  debugging  information.
       Numbers up to 5 are currently useful.

SYSLOG ENTRIES

There are 3 different categories of syslog entries for statistics: host, connection and global.

The host statistics are generated for a given peer at regular intervals after the first connection is
made (or, if the remote is unreachable, after spooling starts). The host statistics give totals over all
connections that have been active during the given time frame. For example (broken here to fit the page,
with "vixie" being the peer):

May 23 12:49:08 news innfeed[16015]: vixie checkpoint
seconds 1381 offered 2744 accepted 1286 refused 1021
rejected 437 missing 0 accsize 8506220 rejsize 142129
spooled 990 on_close 0 unspooled 240 deferred 10/15.3
requeued 25 queue 42.1/100:14,35,13,4,24,10

The meanings of these fields are:

seconds
The time since innfeed connected to the host or since the statistics were reset by a "final" log entry.

offered
The number of IHAVE commands sent to the host if it is not in streaming mode. The sum of the number of
TAKETHIS commands sent when no-CHECK mode is in effect plus the number of CHECK commands sent in
streaming mode (when no-CHECK mode is not in effect).

accepted
The number of articles which were sent to the remote host and accepted by it.

refused
The number of articles offered to the host that it indicated it did not want because it had already
seen the message-ID. The remote host indicates this by sending a 435 response to an IHAVE command or a
438 response to a CHECK command.

rejected
The number of articles transferred to the host that it did not accept because it determined either that
it already had the article or it did not want it because of the article's Newsgroups or Distribution
header fields, etc. The remote host indicates that it is rejecting the article by sending a 437 or 439
response after innfeed sent the entire article.

missing
The number of articles which innfeed was told to offer to the host but which were not present in the
article spool. These articles were probably cancelled or expired before innfeed was able to offer them
to the host.

accsize
The number of bytes of all accepted articles transferred to the host.

rejsize
The number of bytes of all rejected articles transferred to the host.

spooled
The number of article entries that were written to the .output backlog file because the articles either
could not be sent to the host or were refused by it. Articles are generally spooled either because new
articles are arriving more quickly than they can be offered to the host, or because innfeed closed all
the connections to the host and pushed all the articles currently in progress to the .output backlog
file.

on_close
The number of articles that were spooled when innfeed closed all the connections to the host.

unspooled
The number of article entries that were read from the .input backlog file.

deferred
The first number is the number of articles that the host told innfeed to retry later by sending a 431
or 436 response. innfeed immediately puts these articles back on the tail of the queue.

The second number is the average (mean) size of deferred articles during the previous logging interval

requeued
The number of articles that were in progress on connections when innfeed dropped those connections and
put the articles back on the queue. These connections may have been broken by a network problem or
became unresponsive causing innfeed to time them out.

queue
The first number is the average (mean) queue size during the previous logging interval. The second
number is the maximum allowable queue size. The third number is the percentage of the time that the
queue was empty. The fourth through seventh numbers are the percentages of the time that the queue was
>0% to 25% full, 25% to 50% full, 50% to 75% full, and 75% to <100% full. The last number is the
percentage of the time that the queue was totally full.

If the -z option is used (see below), then when the peer stats are generated, each connection will log
its stats too. For example, for connection number zero (from a set of five):

May 23 12:49:08 news innfeed[16015]: vixie:0 checkpoint
seconds 1381 offered 596 accepted 274 refused 225
rejected 97 accsize 773623 rejsize 86591

If you only open a maximum of one connection to a remote, then there will be a close correlation between
connection numbers and host numbers, but in general you cannot tie the two sets of number together in any
easy or very meaningful way. When a connection closes, it will always log its stats.

If all connections for a host get closed together, then the host logs its stats as "final" and resets its
counters. If the feed is so busy that there is always at least one connection open and running, then
after some amount of time (set via the config file), the host stats are logged as final and reset. This
is to make generating higher level stats from log files, by other programs, easier.

There is one log entry that is emitted for a host just after its last connection closes and innfeed is
preparing to exit. This entry contains counts over the entire life of the process. The "seconds" field
is from the first time a connection was successfully built, or the first time spooling started. If a
host has been completely idle, it will have no such log entry.

May 23 12:49:08 news innfeed[16015]: decwrl global
seconds 1381 offered 34 accepted 22 refused 3 rejected 7
missing 0 accsize 81277 rejsize 12738 spooled 0 unspooled 0

The final log entry is emitted immediately before exiting. It contains a summary of the statistics over
the entire life of the process.

Feb 13 14:43:41 news innfeed[22344]: ME global
seconds 15742 offered 273441 accepted 45750 refused 222008
rejected 3334 missing 217 accsize 93647166 rejsize 7421839
spooled 10 unspooled 0

OPTIONS

innfeed takes the following options.

-a spool-dir
The -a flag is used to specify the top of the article spool tree. innfeed does a chdir(2) to this
directory, so it should probably be an absolute path. The default is patharticles as set in
inn.conf.

-b directory
The -b flag may be used to specify a different directory for backlog file storage and retrieval, as
well as for lock files. If the path is relative, then it is relative to pathspool as set in
inn.conf. The default is "innfeed".

You are encouraged to use the backlog-directory parameter in the configuration file to declare a
specific directory, as otherwise news.daily won't get it and some maintenance operations on the
backlog directory won't be performed.

-c config-file
The -c flag may be used to specify a different config file from the default value. If the path is
relative, then it is relative to pathetc as set in inn.conf. The default is innfeed.conf.

Note that if you use a different name than the default one, and also change the default setting of
log-file or pid-file in the configuration file, scanlogs will not be able to rotate the debug log
files (their names are searched in innfeed.conf and innfeed-delayed.conf). Other maintenance
operations performed by news.daily won't also be done if backlog-directory is changed from its
default in a configuration file named differently.

-C The -C flag is used to have innfeed simply check the config file, report on any errors and then exit.

-d log-level
The -d flag may be used to specify the initial logging level. All debugging messages go to stderr
(which may not be what you want, see the -l flag below).

-e bytes
The -e flag may be used to specify the size limit (in bytes) for the .output backlog files innfeed
creates. If the output file gets bigger than 10% more than the given number, innfeed will replace
the output file with the tail of the original version. The default value is "0", which means there
is no limit.

-h Use the -h flag to print the usage message.

-l logfile
The -l flag may be used to specify a different log file from stderr. As innd starts innfeed with
stderr attached to /dev/null, using this option can be useful in catching any abnormal error
messages, or any debugging messages (all "normal" errors messages go to syslog).

You are encouraged to use the log-file parameter in the configuration file to declare a specific file
name, as otherwise scanlogs won't get it and the log file won't be rotated.

-m The -m flag is used to turn on logging of all missing articles. Normally, if an article is missing,
innfeed keeps a count, but logs no further information. When this flag is used, details about
message-IDs and expected path names are logged.

-M If innfeed has been built with mmap support, then the -M flag turns OFF the use of mmap(); otherwise,
it has no effect.

-o bytes
The -o flag sets a value of the maximum number of bytes of article data innfeed is supposed to keep
in memory. This does not work properly yet.

-p pid-file
The -p flag is used to specify the file name to write the pid of the process into. A relative path
is relative to pathrun as set in inn.conf. The default is innfeed.pid.

You are encouraged to use the pid-file parameter in the configuration file to declare a specific file
name, as otherwise scanlogs won't get it and the log file won't be properly flushed before being
rotated.

-s command
The -s flag specifies the name of a command to run in a subprocess and read article information from.
This is similar to channel mode operation, only that command takes the place usually occupied by
innd.

-S status-file
The -S flag specifies the name of the file to write the periodic status to. If the path is relative,
it is considered relative to pathlog as set in inn.conf. The default is innfeed.status.

-v When the -v flag is given, version information is printed to stderr and then innfeed exits.

-x The -x flag is used to tell innfeed not to expect any article information from innd but just to
process any backlog files that exist and then exit.

-y The -y flag is used to allow dynamic peer binding. If this flag is used and article information is
received from innd that specifies an unknown peer, then the peer name is taken to be the IP name too,
and an association with it is created. Using this, it is possible to only have the global defaults
in the innfeed.conf file, provided the peer name as used by innd is the same as the IP name.

Note that innfeed with -y and no peer in innfeed.conf would cause a problem that innfeed drops the
first article.

-z The -z flag is used to cause each connection, in a parallel feed configuration, to report statistics
when the controller for the connections prints its statistics.

BUGS

       When using the -x option, the config file entry's initial-connections field will be the total  number  of
       connections  created  and  used,  no  matter  how many big the batch file, and no matter how big the max-
       connections field specifies.  Thus a value of "0" for initial-connections means nothing will happen in -x
       mode.

       innfeed does not automatically grab the file out of pathoutgoing.  This needs to be prepared  for  it  by
       external means.

       Probably too many other bugs to count.

ALTERNATIVE

       An   alternative   to   innfeed   can   be   innduct,   maintained   by  Ian  Jackson  and  available  at
       <http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/ucgi/~ian/git-manpage/innduct.git/innduct.8>.  It is intended to solve
       a design issue in the way innfeed works.  As a matter of fact, the program feed protocol  spoken  between
       innd  and  innfeed is lossy: if innfeed dies unexpectedly, articles which innd has written to the pipe to
       innfeed will be skipped.  innd has no way of telling which articles those are, no useful records, and  no
       attempts to resend these articles.

FILES

       pathbin/innfeed
           The binary program itself.

       pathetc/innfeed.conf
           The configuration file.

       pathspool/innfeed
           The directory for backlog files.

HISTORY

       Written by James Brister <brister@vix.com> for InterNetNews.  Converted to POD by Julien Elie.

       Earlier versions of innfeed (up to 0.10.1) were shipped separately; innfeed is now part of INN and shares
       the same version number.