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touch_newsgroup(1) General Commands Manual touch_newsgroup(1)

NAME

touch_newsgroup - force leafnode to continue reading low-traffic newsgroups

SYNOPSIS

touch_newsgroup [-f groupsfile] [-h hostname] [-v] [newsgroups]

DESCRIPTION

touch_newsgroup is a Perl script which reads the last article in the specified newsgroups on the specified using NNTP.

This prevents leafnode or similar news-servers from marking those newsgroups as inactive because no-one is reading them.

Perl and the Net::NNTP module are required to use this program. On Debian systems these are avalible in the perl5 and libnet-perl packages.

OPTIONS

Read newsgroup names from groupsfile in addition to any specified on command line. Use -f - to read from stdin.
Read newsgroups on host hostname (default 127.0.0.1)
Be verbose. Prints the number of the article it reads from each newsgroup.
names of newsgroups to read. May be omitted if a groupsfile is specified.

ENVIRONMENT

Requires Net::NNTP module (available in libnet from CPAN or the libnet-perl package). On Debian systems, this program will by default be run daily on the list of newsgroups specified in /etc/news/leafnode/touch_groups if that file exists.

LIMITATIONS

Only one news-server is catered for, the IP address of which is hard-wired into the script as $nntp_host.

BUGS

dies if it encounters any problems.

AUTHOR

Copyright 1999 Jim Nicholson <j.nicholson@computer.org>

SEE ALSO

leafnode(8)

18 June 1999