[leafnode-list] Re: Inconsistent behavious between -P and no flags?

Matthias Andree matthias.andree at gmx.de
Thu Nov 10 23:23:38 CET 2005


Robert Marshall <robert at chezmarshall.freeserve.co.uk> writes:

> I post a summary of newsgroup activity to a couple of groups, this is done
> by a script that puts a file in /var/spool/news.out.going with a name that
> reflects the group, I've just noticed that if I run fetchnews with -P it
> doesn't get posted but fetchnews does post it.

> A bit of digging reveals that checkqueue expects the postable files to
> contain only digits and the '-' character. I assume that without a -P
> checkqueue isn't tested and any file in out.going gets processed.

Your observation is correct, -P believes there were nothing to post
unless there is at least one file that matches [0-9-]+

Given that leafnode-2, as an alpha version, makes no warranties about
its internal spool layout, and users aren't supposed to hack the spool,
I think...

> Setting none of the options
>     -B -H -P -R
> is equivalent to setting all of them, unless [-M message-id] is used.
>
> Maybe these should be consistent and then I might have to tidy up my
> script!

...consistency would be nice, but what for? The inconsistency is
actually an optimization. (Yes I know about premature optimization being
the root of many evils.)

If you want consistency, how about using a small script (Perl, Python,
Ruby, ...) to connect to leafnode and posting via NNTP? That interface
is standardized, so it doesn't change over leafnode versions.

I imagine there must be some scripts around that just post one file to a
server, or programs. One for instance is the "rpost" tool that ships
with "suck".

Would such a program solve your problem?

-- 
Matthias Andree



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