control(8)

NAME
control - implementation of control messages

SYNOPSIS
newgroup group_name [ moderated ]
rmgroup group_name
checkgroups
cancel msg_id
version
sendsys
senduuname
control -c {one of the above}

DESCRIPTION

The control program implements the functions of the various control messages that can be sent via the USENET "NEWS" system. These messages are articles with some extra fields in their headers, to indicate that some special kind of action is requested. If the inews(8) program detects such an incoming article, it will check to see which type of control message it is, and call one of the programs below. All these programs are links to the control binary. As of W-NEWS version 4.40, these programs are not called individually, but the control type is given by the -c flag. Some programs need additional textual data, which is why they get the article itself on their standard input.

Currently, the following types of control messages are supported by the W-NEWS package:

newgroup - add a new newsgroup to the system.

rmgroup - remove a newsgroup from the system.

checkgroups - check the system's newsgroups database.

cancel - cancel the transmission of a posted article.

version - show the system's NEWS software version.

sendsys - show the system's "sys" file contents.

senduuname - show the system's "uuname(1C)" output.

We will now discuss each of these control messages in more detail.

newgroup can be used to create new newsgroups on the network. It is called with the name of the new group as its first (required) argument. An optional second argument may be the keyword moderated , in which case a moderated newgroup will be created, instead of the default of unmoderated . A message about the creation of the new group is put in the system's logfile.

rmgroup is the program that removes a newsgroup from the system. It expects the name of the news group to be removed as its first (and only) argument, and it then removes its entries from the system's active and newsgroups files, and it will remove its directory from the master spool directory, /usr/spool/news . A message about the removal is put in the system's logfile.

checkgroups performs a consistency check on the system's newsgroups file, by comparing it with the list of newsgroups in the message body of the article. All differences will be mailed to both the sender of the control message and the system's news administrator.

cancel will be called whenever a user wants to cancel an article he or she posted. This process is not failsafe, because the article may already have been forwarded to other sites before this message is received. Anyhow, this program checks the system's history file too see if the requested article has indeed been received. If this is the case, all occurrences of the article will be removed, and their entries will be removed from the history file to prevent looping. A message about the cancellation will be put in the system's logfile.

version simply mails the NEWS software's version ID back to the sender of the message. It is seldom used.

sendsys mails the contents of the system's sys file to the sender of the message. This is allowed, since the information in the sys file is supposed to be public information.

senduuname mails the output of the system's uuname(1C) command to the sender of the message. This command usually prints a list of sites that are connected by UUCP. It used to be present to automate the creation of network maps, but it is seldom used nowadays.

FILES
/usr/lib/news/active,
/usr/lib/news/history,
/usr/lib/news/errlog,
/usr/lib/news/log,
/usr/lib/news/newsgroups
(These files may be located in /var/adm/news and /conf/news instead)

AUTHORS
Fred N. van Kempen, waltje@Infomagic.COM
Udo Munk, udo@umunk.GUN.de (Coherent)