NAME

nntpfs − network news transport protocol (NNTP) file system

SYNOPSIS

­nntpfs [ ­-a ] [ ­-s ­service ] [ ­-m ­mountpoint ] [ ­system ]

DESCRIPTION

­Nntpfs dials the TCP network news transport protocol (NNTP) port, 119, on ­system (default ’$nntp’) and presents at ­mountpoint (default /mnt/news) a file system corresponding to the news articles stored on system.

If the ­-s option is given, the file system is posted as /srv/service. If the ­-a option is given, ­nntpfs authenticates to the system with a user name and password obtained from factotum(4). The key specifier is

proto=pass service=nntp server=server user? !password? 

The file system contains a directory per newsgroup, with dots turned into slashes, e.g., ­comp/os/plan9 for comp.os.plan9.  Each newsgroup directory contains one numbered directory per article.  The directories follow the numbering used by the server.  Each article directory contains three files: article, header, and body.  The ­article file contains the full text of the article, while ­header and ­body contain only the header or body. 

Each newsgroup directory contains a write-only ­post file that may be used to post news articles.  RFC1036-compliant articles should be written to it.  The ­post file will only exist in a given newsgroup directory if articles are allowed to be posted to it.  Other than that, the ­post file is ­not tied to its directory’s newsgroup.  The groups to which articles are eventually posted are determined by the ­newsgroups: header lines in the posted article, not by the location of the ­post file in the file system. 

The qid version of a newsgroup directory is the largest numbered article directory it contains (~0, if there are no articles). 

The modification time on a newsgroup directory is the last time a new article was recorded during this ­nntpfs session.  To force a check for new articles, stat(2) the newsgroup directory.

To force a check for new newsgroups, stat(2) the root directory. Note that this causes the entire list of groups, which can be about a megabyte, to be transferred.

To terminate the connection, ­unmount the mount point. 

­Nntpfs makes no effort to send “keepalives” so that servers do not hang up on it.  Instead, it redials as necessary when hangups are detected. 

EXAMPLE

Authenticate to a private news server:

% echo key proto=pass service=nntp server=nose.mit.edu \
user=rsc !password=secret >/mnt/factotum/ctl
% nntpfs -a nose.mit.edu

SOURCE

­/sys/src/cmd/nntpfs.c

BUGS

Directories are presented for deleted articles; the files in them cannot be opened. 

Plan 9  —  September 21, 2002