noffle.conf(5)noffle.conf(5)NAMEnoffle.conf - Configuration file for NOFFLE news server
DESCRIPTION
The NOFFLE news server - see noffle(1) - takes its configuration from a
configuration file. By default this file is /usr/local/etc/nof‐
fle.conf.
noffle.conf is a normal text file containing NOFFLE settings, one per
line.
Leading whitespace on a line is ignored, as is any comment text. Com‐
ment text begins with a '#' character and continues to the end of the
line. Blank lines are permitted.
SETTINGS
server <hostname>[:<port>] [<user> <pass>]
Name of the remote server. If no port given, port 119 is used.
Username and password for servers that need authentication
(Original AUTHINFO). The password may not contain white-spaces.
If there are multiple server entries in the config file, all of
them are used for getting groups. In this case the first server
should be the one of your main provider. Note that you must
always run 'noffle --query groups' after making changes to the
server entries.
getgroups <group pattern> [, <group pattern> ...]
Only retrieve from the most recently specified server newsgroups
that match the specified patterns. The patterns can contain
wildcards, and there can be multiple getgroups lines. For fur‐
ther details on getgroups processing in tandem with omitgroups,
see the section on omitgroups following.
Default: All groups
omitgroups <group pattern> [, <group pattern> ...]
Don't retrieve from the most recently specified server news‐
groups that match the specified patterns. The patterns can con‐
tain wildcards, and there can be multiple omitgroups lines. When
processing a new newsgroup name, it is checked first to see if
it appears on the getgroups list (if any). If not, the group is
rejected. Then the group is checked to see if it appears on the
omitgroups list. If it does not, the group is accepted as a
group NOFFLE will list and collect as required.
Default: No groups
max-fetch <n>
Never get more than <n> articles. If there are more, the oldest
ones are discarded.
Default: 300
from-domain <domain>
When invoked as inews(1) NOFFLE will add a From: line to posts
that lack one. The address given uses the userid of the user who
invoked inews and the specified domain.
Default: The system domain
log-debug <log category> [<log category ...]
Log debugging information from the specified log category or
categories. Logging is via the system logging daemon syslogd(8)
(to the debug facility) and additionally to stderr when running
interactively. The available categories for logging are all,
none, config, auth, control, expire, fetch, filter, newsbase,
noffle, post, protocol, requests and server. The noffle cate‐
gory is automatically selected whenever any other category is
selected. These messages are in addition to messages logged to
the system logging daemon error, information and notification
facilities.
Default: none
organization <organization>
When invoked as inews(1) NOFFLE will, unless the -O flag is
specified, add an Organization: line to posts that lack one. If
no organization is specified, the line is not added.
Default: <empty string>
mail-to <address>
Receiver of failed postings. If empty then failed postings are
returned to the sender (taking the address from the article's
Reply-To, Sender, X-Sender or From field, in this order).
Default: <empty string>
auto-unsubscribe yes|no
Automatically remove groups from fetch list if they have not
been accessed for a number of days. Groups are only unsubscribed
if there are fresh articles arriving and remaining unread.
Default: no
auto-unsubscribe-days <n>
Number of days used for auto-unsubscribe option.
Default: 30
thread-follow-time <n>
Automatically mark articles for download in thread mode, if they
are referencing an article that has been opened by a reader
within the last <n> days.
Default: 7
connect-timeout <n>
Timeout for connecting to remote server in seconds.
Default: 30
auto-subscribe yes|no
Automatically put groups on fetch list if someone reads them.
<mode> can be full, over, thread (depending on the fetch mode)
or off (do not subscribe automatically). Condition for putting a
group on the list is that an article is opened. For this reason
there is always a pseudo article visible in groups that are not
on the fetch list.
Default: no
auto-subscribe-mode <group pattern> full|thread|over
Mode for auto-subscribe option for groups that match the given
pattern.
Default: none
default-auto-subscribe-mode full|thread|over
Default mode for auto-subscribe option. Used for all groups that
do not match a pattern specified with auto-subscribe-mode
entries (if any).
Default: over
info-always-unread yes|no
An information article is presented for all unsubscribed news‐
groups. If auto-subscribe mode is off, there is a possibility of
someone reading the article but forgetting the instructions
therein and not knowing how to return to a read article. This
option causes the information article always to be present as an
unread article in a group when auto-subscribe if off. It does
this by incrementing the article number of the information arti‐
cle every time it is read.
Default: yes
authenticate-client yes|no
Insist that clients authenticate themselves using the NNTP
AUTHINFO USER/AUTHINFO PASS transaction before any news is
served. This option is recognised only when NOFFLE has been
built with authentication enabled. The form of the authentica‐
tion is determined at compile time; either PAM is used (with a
service name "noffle"), or the userlist file is scanned. This
file, by default /etc/noffle.users, is a text file. Spaces, com‐
ments starting with '#' and blank lines are ignored. Other lines
must contain space-separated 'username password' pairs. For
security reasons the userlist file must be a regular file, not a
link, and must be owner readable only. Finally, note that the
NNTP AUTHINFO USER/AUTHINFO PASS transaction is not encrypted in
any way, and so must itself be considered insecure.
Default: no
post-locally yes|no
Place articles posted to external servers in the local aticle
database immediately. Some servers may rewrite Message-IDs,
which will cause duplicate postings of this option is enabled.
Also, if for some reason the post to the remote server fails,
the article still exists in the local database, which may be a
source of some confusion.
Default: no
replace-messageid yes|no
Always replace the Message-ID of a posted article with a Mes‐
sage-ID generated by NOFFLE. NOFFLE will always add a Message-ID
if none is present, or replace a Message-ID that does not meet
the basic formatting and content requirements for a Message-ID.
However, some news readers may generate Message-IDs that are not
accepted by some servers (for example the server may insist the
Message-ID domain is part of the server domain) or may not
always be unique. In either of these cases you may prefer to
have NOFFLE always replace the Message-ID.
Default: no
hostname <fully.qualified.domain.name>
Specify right-hand side of Message-IDs generated by NOFFLE. If
omitted, the fully qualified domain name of your system will be
used. If you do not have a fully qualified domain name, your
upstream newsserver or someone else might allow you to use a
subdomain name.
Default: <the fully qualified domain name of your system>
append-reply-to yes|no
Append a 'Reply-To:' header to messages posted without it. The
address from the 'From:' header is used. Though this might seem
pretty useless at first glance it may be desireable as some
providers were known to overwrite the 'From:' header.
Default: yes
path-header <path header content>
Articles posted without a Path: header have one added by NOFFLE.
When path-header has its default value (empty) the header con‐
tent is "<hostname>!not-for-mail". Use the path-header setting
to provide alternate content for the Path: header. This will
very rarely be necessary.
Default: <empty string>
default-expire <n>
The default expiry period, in days. An expiry period of 0 means
"never".
Default: 14
noffle-user <n>
The username under which NOFFLE normally runs. If NOFFLE is
invoked by root, it will drop its real and effective UID to this
user as soon as possible.
Default: news
noffle-group <n>
The group under which NOFFLE normally runs. NOFFLE will change
to this real and effective GID as soon as possible.
Default: news
expire <group pattern> <n>
The expiry period for a newsgroup or set of newsgroups, in days.
The expiry pattern can contain wildcards, and there can be mul‐
tiple expire lines. When checking the expiry period for a group,
the expiry patterns are checked in the order in which they
appear in /usr/local/etc/noffle.conf until the first match
occurs. If no pattern matches the group name, the default expiry
period is used. An expiry period of 0 means "never".
Default: no
filter <filter specification>
Add the specified filter to the list of filters to be applied to
incoming articles. Filters are applied in the order in which
they appear in /usr/local/etc/noffle.conf and are further
described in the section FILTERS below.
Default: No filters
GROUP NAME WILDCARDS
NOFFLE uses a wildcard format that closely matches filename-style wild‐
cards. alt.binaries.*, for example, matches all newsgroups under the
alt.binaries hierarchy. A full description of the format (known as
wildmat patterns) is as follows.
\x Turns off the special meaning of x and matches it directly; this
is used mostly before a question mark or asterisk, and is not
special inside square brackets.
? Matches any single character.
* Matches any sequence of zero or more characters.
[x...y]
Matches any single character specified by the set x...y. A
minus sign may be used to indicate a range of characters. That
is, [0-5abc] is a shorthand for [012345abc]. More than one
range may appear inside a character set; [0-9a-zA-Z._] matches
almost all of the legal characters for a host name. The close
bracket, ], may be used if it is the first character in the set.
The minus sign, -, may be used if it is either the first or last
character in the set.
[^x...y]
This matches any character not in the set x...y, which is inter‐
preted as described above. For example, [^]-] matches any char‐
acter other than a close bracket or minus sign.
FILTERS
NOFFLE supports basic filtering on incoming articles. Articles to be
downloaded can be matched against one or more criteria and matching
articles are marked for download using one of the group subscribe modes
full, over or thread. Alternatively the filter may specify that the
article mode is discard in which case neither the article nor the arti‐
cle overview will be downloaded.
A filter configuration line consist of one or more filter specifica‐
tions following the filter keyword on the line. The available specifi‐
cations are:
action = full|over|thread|discard|default. Specifies the action to be
taken if the filter matches. If not specified or specified as default,
the action is as specified by the group's subscription mode.
group = <group pattern>. Matches if any group in which the article
appears matches the specified group pattern.
subject = <regular expression>. Matches if the article subject matches
the given regular expression. See the section on regular expressions
below.
from = <regular expression>. Matches if the article From: address
matches the given regular expression. See the section on regular
expressions below.
msgid = <regular expression>. Matches if the article message ID
matches the given regular expression. See the section on regular
expressions below.
bytes < or = or > <number>. Matches if the number of bytes in the
article is less than, equal to, or greater than the given number.
lines < or = or > <number>. Matches if the number of lines in the
article is less than, equal to, or greater than the given number.
refs < or = or > <number>. Matches if the number of articles refer‐
enced by the article is less than, equal to, or greater than the given
number.
reference = <regular expression>. Matches if one of the message IDs in
the reference line matches the given regular expression. See the sec‐
tion on regular expressions below.
xposts < or = or > <number>. Matches if the number of groups the arti‐
cle is posted to is less than, equal to, or greater than the given num‐
ber.
date < or = or > <date expression>. Matches if the article is older,
from the same day or newer than the given date expression. See the sec‐
tion on date expressions below.
older = <date expression>. Equals date <
newer = <date expression>. Equals date >
post-status = mod|yes|no. Matches if the current newsgroup is moder‐
ated, not moderated or closed. Unlike the group filter, only the cur‐
rent newsgroup is checked.
Numbers may have a suffix of 'k' or 'm'. As you might expect, 'k' indi‐
cates the number is to be multiplied by 1024 and 'm' indicates it is to
be multiplied by 1024*1024. Thus 10k is 10240 and 1m is 1048576.
For example, the following filters download all articles in groups in
the alt.binaries tree in full if they are < 10k in size, otherwise
downloads overviews.
filter group=alt.binaries.* bytes < 10k action=full
filter group=alt.binaries.* action=over
This filter discards all articles with a subject resembling the infa‐
mous "$$$ Make Money Now! $$$".
filter subject="\$*.*Make.*[M|m]oney.*\$" action=discard
REGULAR EXPRESSIONS
NOFFLE uses extended POSIX-style regular expressions in its filters.
Regular expressions are a powerful means of describing patterns that
match text. A full description is to be found in regex(7).
DATE EXPRESSIONS
NOFFLE uses very simple date expressions. You can use fixed dates in
rfc-2822 style or variable dates:
date="14 May 2002 18:32:50 +0200" matches any article sent up to 24
hours before or after the above fixed date. Please don't forget the
timezone specification.
date>"now+1.5" matches any article newer than 36 hours from the current
date.
date="lastupdate-14" matches any article older than 14 days since the
date of the last noffle --fetch or noffle --query groups from the cur‐
rent newsserver.
date="invalid" matches any article with an invalid date header.
SEE ALSOnoffle(1)regex(7)AUTHORS
Markus Enzenberger <me@markus-enzenberger.de>
Volker Wysk <volker.wysk@student.uni-tuebingen.de>
Jim Hague <jim.hague@acm.org>
Uwe Hermann <uh1763@bingo-ev.de>
Mirko Liss <mirko.liss@web.de>
1998-2003.
noffle.conf(5)
