- Convert RFC-1036 Usenet news to FTN Fidonet packets.
[-h] [-x verbosity] [-I file] [-r Address] [-g grade] [receipent]
The default mode is the mail mode of operation. In mail mode, you must
specify recepient address(es) on the command line, in the form:
"Eugene.Crosser@p14.f6.n5020.z2.fidonet.org".
The first recepient address is used as the routing address, if no routing address is specified. In news mode then the $NEWSSITE environment variable is used as the routing address.
When the news mode is in effect, (i.e. "-n" key is specified or the program is called by alias "ifnews") a news article (or batch) is expected on stdin.
Ifmail will try to preserve as much information as possible in "X-FTN-..." headers and "^ARFC-..." kludges, and restore messages more or less accurately to their original form when double-gatewaying.
A dbm-based alias database is supported, so if a message passes from a newsgroup to an echo, the author's free form name and domain address are stored, and when a netmail reply comes from fidonet to that free form name, it is passed as a mail message to the remembered domain address.
ATTENTION:
This mechanism will not work if you specify fidonet-style
address as the "visible name" in your MTA.
However you can edit /etc/aliases to add lines of the pattern:
John.Smith: jsmith
Or you can set GECOS matching in sendmail.cf (OGTrue)
Several addresses may be specified in the config file, netmail from fidonet addressed to any of those addresses is assumed local and resolved through the aforementioned database, otherwise the mail will be routed through the normal MTA (and presumably packed to some other fidonet node). If there is a "To:" line at the beginning of the fido message, the address is taken from it (ONLY THE FIRST ADDRESS!).
When an RFC message is split, unique MSGIDs are generated for all parts after the first one. In any case, the original "Message-ID:" header is preserved in the "^ARFC-Message-ID:" kludge and used if the message comes back to usenet on some (other) gateway.
On the way from news to echo, if the node to which the packet is being created is present in an "X-FTN-SEEN-BY:" header, the message is not included in the packet. SEEN-BY lines in the messages included into the packet consist of (1) your node primary address, (2) copy of "X-FTN-SEEN-BY:" header(s), (3) ftn addresses that could be parsed from the CNews file "$NEWSCTL/log" in the line with the corresponding Message-ID. For the latter to work, you should have a Cnews compatible log file available for reading and have an "ndbm" package. This works with INN too.
ATTENTION: your feed name in the cnews "sys" file should be fNNN.nMMM or pNNN.fMMM.nLLL, without zone and domain, see the examples included with the source distribution.
In some cases, though, you will need to specify zone and/or domain of the feed, e.g. if you are exporting echomail to several networks. In such case, specify the "cutdown" fNNN.nMMM notation after the slash, to prevent exporting back (Refer the your news systems manual). This trick may also be useful if your hub presents non-primary AKA in the echomail it gives you.
Ifmail does make some attempt to process file attaches, but only locally. Not passing to the Internet and back, but if a fileattach netmail message is routed from one fidonet node to another, it probably will take the attached file with it.
There is also a feature to define "forbidden" groups. If a usenet message is crossposted to some of the gated groups _and_ to some of the forbidden groups it will not be passed to any fidonet echoes. Messages with "Control:" headers are also not passed to FidoNet.
-x verbosity
Set the debug verbosity
verbosity
may be a number from 0 to 32 to set 'on' bits from 1 to number, or
a string of letters where 'a' = bit 1, 'b' = bit 2, etc. up to bit 26.
-N
Put resultant packets to /tmp/ifmail.
-I File
Use the alternate configuration file
File.
-n
Set news mode for processing RFC-1036 Usenet news rather than RFC-822
electronic mail.
-s
Set secure mode: this enables ifmail to check the nodelist before
gating the message from RFC-822 electronic mail to FTN-style netmail.
-r Address
Route packets to the Fidonet address
Address.
Address
should be in the format "[pNN.]fNN.nNN[.zNN[.domain]]".
-g Grade
Set the type of Fidonet packet to create. Where
Grade
is one of:
N = Normal (Default)
C = Crash
H = Hold
-c Charset
Forces the use of the given
Charset,
it is useful when you know that a given link can only handle one charset
for its incoming mail. This switch override all the charset handling done
internally. It needs
-DDIRTY_CHRS
at compile time to be active.
-l Level
Sets the
Level
for ^aRFC- kludges. If not set 1 is the default.
it determines the amount of info from rfc headers that is kept when gating.
-1: really nothing is gated, not recommended at all !
0: only intended for points or end-leaf nodes that have only an FTN link
1: normal level inteded for normal gateways and nodes (points)
2: keeps almost everything, including lots of non relevant headers.
3: hey! same as 2 but in plain text, no ^aRFC- kludge is used.
I recommend you to leave the default value of 1 if you don't really know what you are doing.
-b
Don't split the messages when writting to PKT. Use this option
only if you know your partner uses a tosser that can handle messages
of arbitrary size (or at least 64KB big). Note that strict compliance
to
fidonet
standards imply handling messages of arbitrary size.
1993, 1994 Eugene Crosser
This is free software. You can do what you wish with it as long as this copyright notice is preserved.