snmail,v!!VERSION!!(8)

NAME
snmail - mail-to-news filter

SYNOPSIS
snmail [-sP] [listname [prefix]]

DESCRIPTION
snmail reads a single email message on standard input, and writes the converted message to standard output. This output is suitable for feeding to snstore. snmail does these conversions: If the first line is a UUCP From_ line, it is silently discarded; a Newsgroups: line is added with the value of prefixlistname (prefix concatenated with listname), and other existing Newsgroups: lines are removed; and a Path: line is created from all Received: lines, which are removed; all header lines are unfolded; if no message ID exists, one is created; message IDs in all References: lines and In-Reply-To: lines are collected into a single References: line; all lines are rewritten to end in CRLF; and a lone . on a line is written at the end of the message. snmail will accept and pass on messages with invalid header fields. snmail is meant to be run from a .forward or the /etc/aliases file (if you're using sendmail or similar) or from a .qmail file (if you're using qmail). snmail may write status or error messages to standard error.

OPTIONS

-s  Pipe output to snstore directly, do not write to standard output. This is so the exit status is not lost in a shell pipeline. If you use this flag, it is also a good idea to also use -c (tell snstore to check if article already exists).

Other options
    snmail also accepts options intended for snstore, viz. -c, -v, and -n, and these are passed on uninterpreted.

ARGUMENTS

prefix
    is the prefix of the newsgroup; if not specified, it defaults to local. (note the trailing .). prefix may not begin with a . (dot) but it may be empty.

listname
    completes the newsgroup name; if not specified, it is the local part of the address in the Return-Path: line if it exists and isn't empty; otherwise it is the local part of the messages' first From:. So if the message originated from the list <linux-lemmings@vger.rutgers.edu>, then the default newsgroup becomes local.linux-lemmings. listname may be empty if prefix isn't. You may want to have a file !!SNROOT!!/prefixlistname/.nopost to deny posting from all and sundry, to prevent the mailing list newsgroup from being contaminated. prefix and listname may contain uppercase characters; these are converted to lower case.

USAGE
There are two ways of forwarding mail to the sn news spool: directly from a user's mail address; or forwarded to a central address and then invoking snmail. The central concern here is permissions; while anyone can run snmail, not everyone may store mail in the spool. Mail setups vary a lot, so basically you're on your own here.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

SNROOT
    If this is set and is not empty, the value is used in place of !!SNROOT!!, the default news spool directory.

PATH
    If -s was specified, determines where to look for snstore, before looking in !!BINDIR!!.

EXIT STATUS
snmail exits 0 if the message was successfully converted and written, or if the message ID already exists in the ID database and the message was not stored or converted. snmail exits with 1 on usage error, 2 on operational error, 3 if the mail message wasn't in the proper format.