tinews.pl - Man Page

tinews.pl [Options] < input

tinews.pl reads an article on STDIN, signs it via pgp(1) or gpg(1) and posts it to a news server.

The article shall not contain any raw 8-bit data or it needs to already have the relevant MIME-headers as tinews.pl will not add any MIME-headers nor encode its input.

If the article contains To:, Cc: or Bcc: headers and mail-actions are configured it will automatically add a “Posted-And-Mailed: yes” header to the article and send out the mail-copies.

If a Cancel-Lock secret file is defined it will automatically add a Cancel-Lock: (and Cancel-Key: if required) header.

The input should have unix line endings (<LF>, '\n'). Use --transform to convert from <CR><LF> to just <LF>.

-a Approved | --approved Approved

Set the article header field Approved: to the given value.

-c Control | --control Control

Set the article header field Control: to the given value.

-d Distribution | --distribution Distribution

Set the article header field Distribution: to the given value.

-e Expires | --expires Expires

Set the article header field Expires: to the given value.

-f From | --from From

Set the article header field From: to the given value.

-i header | --ignore-headers header

Comma separated list of headers that will be ignored during signing. Usually the following headers will be signed if present:

From, Newsgroups, Subject, Control, Supersedes, Followup-To, Date, Injection-Date, Sender, Approved, Message-ID, Reply-To, Cancel-Key, Also-Control and Distribution.

Some of them may be altered on the Server (i.e. Cancel-Key) which would invalid the signature, this option can be used the exclude such headers if required.

-m Message-ID | --message-id Message-ID

Set the article header field Message-ID: to the given value.

-n Newsgroups | --newsgroups Newsgroups

Set the article header field Newsgroups: to the given value.

-o Organization | --organization Organization

Set the article header field Organization: to the given value.

-p port | --port port

use port as NNTP-port

-r Reply-To | --reply-to Reply-To

Set the article header field Reply-To: to the given value.

-s directory | --savedir directory

Save signed article to directory directory instead of posting.

-t Subject | --subject Subject

Set the article header field Subject: to the given value.

-v | --verbose

Warn about disabled options due to lacking perl-modules or executables and unreadable files and enable warnings about raw 8-bit data.

-w Followup-To | --followup-to Followup-To

Set the article header field Followup-To: to the given value.

-x Path | --path Path

Prepend the article header field Path: with the given value.

-D | -N | --debug

Set Net::NNTP(3pm) to debug mode, enable warnings about raw 8-bit data, warn about disabled options due to lacking perl-modules or executables and unreadable files.

-E | --discard-empty

Silently discard an empty article.

-F | --references

Set the article header field References: to the given value.

-H | --help

Show help-page.

-I | --no-injection-date

Do not add Injection-Date: header.

-L | --no-canlock

Do not add Cancel-Lock: / Cancel-Key: headers.

-O | --no-organization

Do not add Organization: header.

-R | --no-control

Restricted mode, disallow control-messages.

-S | --no-signature

Do not append $HOME/.signature.

-X | --no-sign

Do not sign the article.

-Y | --force-auth

Force authentication on connect even if not required by the server.

--canlock-algorithm Algorithm

Digest algorithm used for Cancel-Lock: / Cancel-Key: headers. Supported algorithms are sha1, sha256 and sha512. Default is sha1.

--ssl | --nntps

Use NNTPS (via port 563) if available. This requires a recent version of Net::NNTP(3pm) and IO::Socket::SSL(3pm). Be aware that no SSL verification will be done.

--transform

Convert network line endings (<CR><LF>) to unix line endings (<LF>).

--version

Show version.

-A -V -W

These options are accepted for compatibility reasons but ignored.

-h | --headers

These options are accepted for compatibility reasons but ignored.

The following exit values are returned:

 0

Successful completion.

!=0

An error occurred.

$NEWSHOST

Set to override the NNTP server configured in the source or config-file. It has lower priority than $NNTPSERVER and should be avoided.

$NNTPSERVER

Set to override the NNTP server configured in the source or config-file. This has higher priority than $NEWSHOST.

$NNTPPORT

The NNTP TCP-port to post news to. This variable only needs to be set if the TCP-port is not 119 (the default). The '-p' command-line option overrides $NNTPPORT.

$PGPPASS

Set to override the passphrase configured in the source (used for pgp(1)-2.6.3).

$PGPPASSFILE

Passphrase file used for pgp(1) or gpg(1).

$SIGNER

Set to override the user-id for signing configured in the source. If you neither set $SIGNER nor configure it in the source the contents of the From:-field will be used.

$REPLYTO

Set the article header field Reply-To: to the return address specified by the variable if there isn't already a Reply-To: header in the article. The '-r' command-line option overrides $REPLYTO.

$ORGANIZATION

Set the article header field Organization: to the contents of the variable if there isn't already an Organization: header in the article. The '-o' command-line option overrides $ORGANIZATION, The '-O' command-line option disables it.

$DISTRIBUTION

Set the article header field Distribution: to the contents of the variable if there isn't already a Distribution: header in the article. The '-d' command-line option overrides $DISTRIBUTION.

pgptmp.txt

Temporary file used to store the reformatted article.

pgptmp.txt.asc

Temporary file used to store the reformatted and signed article.

$PGPPASSFILE

The passphrase file to be used for pgp(1) or gpg(1).

$HOME/.signature

Signature file which will be automatically included.

$HOME/.cancelsecret

The passphrase file to be used for Cancel-Locks. This feature is turned off by default.

$HOME/.newsauth

“nntpserver password [user]” pairs or triples for NNTP servers that require authorization. First match counts. Any line that starts with “#” is a comment. Blank lines are ignored. This file should be readable only for the user as it contains the user's unencrypted password for reading news. If no matching entry is found $HOME/.nntpauth is checked.

$HOME/.nntpauth

“nntpserver user password” triples for NNTP servers that require authorization. First match counts. Lines starting with “#” are skipped and blank lines are ignored. This file should be readable only for the user as it contains the user's unencrypted password for reading news. $HOME/.newsauth is checked first.

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/tinewsrc $HOME/.config/tinewsrc $HOME/.tinewsrc

“option=value” configuration pairs, last match counts and only “value” is case sensitive. Lines that start with “#” are ignored. If the file contains unencrypted passwords (e.g. nntp-pass or pgp-pass), it should be readable for the user only. Use -vH to get a full list of all available configuration options.

If you've configured or entered a password, even if the variable that contained that password has been erased, it may be possible for someone to find that password, in plaintext, in a core dump. In short, if serious security is an issue, don't use this script.

Be aware that even if NNTPS is used still no SSL verification will be done.

tinews.pl is designed to be used with pgp(1)-2.6.3, pgp(1)-5, pgp(1)-6, gpg(1) and gpg2(1).

tinews.pl requires the following standard modules to be installed: Getopt::Long(3pm), Net::NNTP(3pm), Time::Local(3pm) and Term::Readline(3pm).

NNTPS (NNTP with implicit TLS; RFC 4642 and RFC 8143) may be unavailable if Net::NNTP(3pm) is too old or IO::Socket::SSL(3pm) is missing on the system. tinews.pl will fallback to unencrypted NNTP in that case.

If the Cancel-Lock feature (RFC 8315) is enabled the following additional modules must be installed: MIME::Base64(3pm), Digest::SHA(3pm) or Digest::SHA1(3pm) and Digest::HMAC_SHA1(3pm). sha256 and sha512 as algorithms for canlock-algorithm are only available with Digest::SHA(3pm).

gpg2(1) users may need to set $GPG_TTY, i.e.

 GPG_TTY=$(tty)
 export GPG_TTY

before using tinews.pl. See <https://www.gnupg.org/> for details.

tinews.pl does not do any MIME encoding, its input should be already properly encoded and have all relevant headers set.

Urs Janssen <urs@tin.org>, Marc Brockschmidt <marc@marcbrockschmidt.de>

pgp(1), gpg(1), gpg2(1), pgps(1), Digest::HMAC_SHA1(3pm), Digest::SHA(3pm), Digest::SHA1(3pm), Getopt::Long(3pm), IO::Socket::SSL(3pm), MIME::Base64(3pm), Net::NNTP(3pm), Time::Local(3pm), Term::Readline(3pm)