| Russ Allbery > Software > INN > INN CURRENT Documentation | innd > |
(Control the main InterNetNews daemon)
ctlinnd [-hs] [-t timeout] [command [argument ...]]
ctlinnd sends a message to the control channel of innd(8), the main InterNetNews daemon.
In the normal mode of behavior, the message is sent to the server, which then performs the requested action and sends back a reply with a text message and an exit code for ctlinnd. If the server successfully performed the command, ctlinnd will print the reply on standard output and exit with a status of zero. If the server could not perform the command, it will direct ctlinnd to exit with a status of one. By default, ctlinnd will wait forever for a response from innd; this can be changed with the -t flag.
The shutdown, xabort, and xexec commands do not
generate a reply, since they cause innd to exit. After these
commands, ctlinnd will always exit silently with a status of zero.
Prints a command summary. If a command is given along with the -h flag, only the usage for that command will be given.
If the command was successful, don't print the output from innd.
Specifies how long to wait for the reply from the server, for commands
other than shutdown, xabort, and xexec.
timeout is the number of seconds to wait. A value of zero says
to wait forever, and a value less than zero says not to wait at all but
just exit immediately with status zero. When waiting for a reply,
ctlinnd will check every two minutes to be sure the server is still
running, to make it less likely that ctlinnd will just hang.
The default is zero, indicating that ctlinnd should wait forever.
Here is the complete list of supported commands. Note that nearly all
commands have a fixed number of arguments. If a parameter may be an empty
string, it is still necessary to pass the empty string to ctlinnd
as an argument (specified in the shell as two adjacent quotes, like
'').
Add an entry to the history database for message-id. The angle brackets around the message-ID are optional. It should normally be protected from the shell with single quotes.
arrival, expires, and posted should be the
number of seconds since epoch and indicate when the article arrived, when
it expires (via the Expires: header), and when it was posted (given in the
Date: header), respectively. expires should be 0 if the
article doesn't have an Expires: header. token is the storage
API token for the article, and may be empty.
This command can only be used while the server is running, and will be rejected if the server is paused or throttled.
Allow remote connections, reversing a prior reject command.
reason must be the same text given to the reject command,
or the empty string (which matches any reason).
Begin feeding site. The server will rescan the
newsfeeds file to find the specified site and set up a
newsfeed for it. If the site already existed, a drop for that site
is done first. This command is forwarded; see NOTES below.
Remove the article with the specified message-ID from the local system. This does not generate a cancel control message; it only affects the local system. The angle brackets around the message-ID are optional. It should normally be protected from the shell with single quotes (and not double quotes). For instance:
ctlinnd cancel 'test@foo.bar'
Note that the history database is updated with the specified message-ID so if an article with the same message-ID is afterwards received, it will be rejected; it is useful for rejecting spam before it arrives.
If the server is throttled manually, this command causes it to briefly open the history database. If the server is paused or throttled for any other reason, this command is rejected.
The newsgroup group is changed so that its status (the fourth field in the active file) becomes status. This may be used to make an existing group moderated or unmoderated, for example.
This command, unlike newgroup or rmgroup, can only be used
while the server is running, and will be rejected if the server is paused
or throttled.
Check the syntax of the newsfeeds file and display a message if any errors are found. The details of the errors are reported to syslog.
Flush and drop site from the server's list of active feeds. This command is forwarded; see NOTES below.
Print detailed information about the state of the feed to site, or brief status about all feeds if site is the empty string.
Flush the buffer for the specified site. The action taken depends on the type of feed the site receives; see newsfeeds(5) for more information. This is useful when the site is being fed by a file and batching is about to start, or to cleanly shut down and respawn a channel feed. If site is an empty string, all sites are flushed and the active file and history database are also flushed to disk. This command is forwarded; see NOTES below.
Flushing the innfeed channel feed is the recommended method of restarting innfeed to pick up new configuration. innd will spawn a new innfeed process while the old process shuts down cleanly.
Close the news and error log files and rename them to add .old to
the file name, then open fresh news and error logs. The
active file and history database are also flushed to disk.
Exploder and process channels are reopened so that they properly take into
account the new log files.
Re-open the history database and start accepting articles again, reversing
a previous pause or throttle command. reason must
be either the empty string or match the text that was given to the earlier
pause or throttle command.
If a reject command is in effect, this will also reverse it by
doing the equivalent of an allow command if the reason matches
reason. Likewise, if a reserve command had been given,
this will clear the reservation if reason matches the text that
was given to reserve.
The history database is automatically closed on throttle or
pause and reopened on go, so the history database can be
replaced during the pause or throttle without requiring an explicit
reload command. If any other configuration files or the
active file were modified, a reload command should
be given to force the server to re-read those files.
If the server throttled itself because it accumulated too many I/O errors, this command will reset the error count.
If innd was not started with the -n y flag, this command
also does the equivalent of a readers command with yes as
the flag and reason as the text.
Close the socket for the specified incoming channel. This may be useful when an incoming connection appears to be hung (although innd will close idle connections automatically after a timeout).
Print a command summary for all commands, or just command if one is specified. This is equivalent to the -h option.
Signal signal is sent to the process underlying the specified
site, which must be a channel or exploder feed. signal may be a
numeric signal number or one of hup, int, or term;
case is not significant.
Cause the server to log its current operating mode to syslog.
Reset the low water marks in the active file based on the contents of file. Each line in file must be of the form:
group low-value
For example:
comp.lang.c++ 243
This command is mostly used by news.daily to update the active file after nightly expiration.
Print the server's operating mode as a multi-line summary of the parameters and the operating state. The parameters in the output correspond to command-line flags to innd and give the current settings of those parameters that can be overridden by command-line flags.
Print the name and relevant information for the given incoming or outgoing channel, or for all channels if channel is an empty string. The response is formatted as:
<name>:<number>:<type>:<idle>:<status>
where <name> is the name of the channel, <number> is its number (generally the same as the file descriptor assigned to it), <idle> is the idle time for an NNTP channel or the process ID for a process channel, and <status> is the status for NNTP channels.
The type is one of the following values:
control Control channel for ctlinnd
file An outgoing file feed
localconn Local channel used by nnrpd and rnews for posting
nntp NNTP channel for remote connections
proc The process for a process feed
remconn The channel that accepts new remote connections
Channel status indicates whether the channel is paused or not. Nothing is
shown unless the channel is paused, in which case paused is shown.
A channel will be paused automatically if the number of remote connections
for that label in incoming.conf is greater than
max-connections within hold-time seconds.
Create the specified newsgroup. The status parameter is the
fourth field of the active file entry, as described in
active(5). If it is not an equal sign, only the first character is used.
creator should be the identity of the person creating the group.
If the newsgroup already exists, this is equivalent to the
changegroup command.
creator, encoded in UTF-8 if given, may be omitted; if so, it
will default to the newsmaster (as specified at configure time, normally
usenet). status may also be omitted; if so, it will
default to y (a normal, unmoderated group). The combination of
defaults make it possible to use the text of the Control: header directly
(although don't do this without checking the syntactic validity of the
header first).
This command can only be done while the server is running or throttled
manually. It will update its internal state when a go command is
sent. This command updates the active.times file as well.
This command is forwarded; see NOTES below.
Change the specified server parameter. letter is the innd command-line option to set and value is the new value. For example:
ctlinnd param i 5
would direct the server to allow only five incoming connections. To
enable or disable the action of the -n flag, use n for the
letter and y or n, respectively, for the value.
The supported values for letter are a, c, H,
i, l, n, o, T, t, and X.
Pause the server so that no incoming articles are accepted. No existing
connections are closed, but the history database is closed. This should
be used for short-term locks, such as when replacing the history database.
If the server was not started with the -n y flag, this command
also does the equivalent of a readers command with no as the
flag and reason as the text, encoded in UTF-8.
Enable or disable Perl filtering. This command is only available if INN
was built with Perl filtering support. If flag starts with
y, filtering is enabled; if it starts with n, filtering is
disabled.
When filtering is disabled, if the filter_innd.pl Perl
filter defined a function filter_end, it will be called prior to
the deactivation of the filter.
Enable or disable Python filtering. This command is only available if INN
was built with Python filtering support. If flag starts with
y, filtering is enabled; if it starts with n, filtering is
disabled.
Allow or disallow readers. If flag starts with the letter
n, then reading is disallowed by causing the server to pass
text as the value of the -r flag to nnrpd. If
flag starts with the letter y and text is either
an empty string or the same string, encoded in UTF-8, that was used when
reading was disabled, reading will be re-enabled.
This command has no effect if nnrpd is being run separately rather than spawned by innd.
Remote connections (those that would not be handed off to nnrpd) are rejected with reason given as the explanation, encoded in UTF-8. Existing connections are not closed.
Update the in-memory copy of server configuration files. what identifies what should be reloaded, and reason is reported to syslog in the message noting the reload.
There is no way to reload inn.conf,
storage.conf, or other configuration files for the storage
or overview backends. To pick up changes to those files, use
ctlinnd xexec innd to restart innd.
If what is the empty string or the word all, everything is
reloaded. If it is the word history, the history database is
closed and re-opened. If it is the word incoming.conf, the
corresponding file is reloaded. If it is the word active or
newsfeeds, both the active and
newsfeeds files are reloaded, which will also cause all
outgoing feeds to be flushed and restarted.
If what is the word filter.perl, the
filter_innd.pl file is reloaded. If the Perl filter
defined a function filter_before_reload, it will be called prior to
re-reading filter_innd.pl. If the Perl function
filter_after_reload is defined, it will be called after
filter_innd.pl has been reloaded. Reloading the Perl
filter does not enable filtering if it has been disabled; use perl
y to do this instead. startup_innd.pl cannot be reloaded.
This file is not available for reloading unless INN was compiled with
Perl filtering support.
If what is the word filter.python, the
filter_innd.py file is reloaded. If a Python method named
filter_before_reload exists, it will be called prior to re-reading
filter_innd.py. If a Python method named __init__
exists, it will be called after filter_innd.py has been
reloaded. Reloading the Python filter does not enable filtering if it has
been disabled; use python y to do this. This file is not available
for reloading unless INN was compiled with Python filtering support.
Update the low water and high water marks for group in the active file based on the information in the overview database. Regardless of the contents of the overview database, the high water mark will not be decreased. (Decreasing it may cause duplicate article numbers to be assigned after a crash, which can cause serious problems with the tradspool storage method.) If group is the empty string, all newsgroups are renumbered. Renumber only works if overview data has been created (if enableoverview is set to true in inn.conf).
Identical to the lowmark command.
Require the next pause or throttle command to use
reason as its reason, encoded in UTF-8. This reservation is
cleared by giving an empty string for the reason. This is used by
programs like expire to coordinate pauses and throttles of the
server and avoid trampling on other instances of themselves.
Remove the specified newsgroup. The group is removed from the
active file and its overview information is purged, making
it immediately unavailable to readers. Unlike the newgroup
command, this command does not update the active.times
file.
This command can only be done while the server is running or throttled manually. This command is forwarded; see NOTES below.
The specified text is sent as a control line to the exploder feed.
The server is shut down, with the specified reason recorded in the log and
sent to all open connections. It is a good idea to send a throttle
command first so that feeds can be shut down more gracefully.
If Perl or Python filtering is compiled in and enabled, certain functions
are called at throttle or shutdown (to save filter state to
disk, for example). Consult the embedded filter documentation for
details.
Enable or disable generation of history performance statistics. If the
parameter is off, no statistics are gathered. Otherwise,
statistics are written to the specified file. A parser for this file is
provided in the contrib tree of the INN distribution.
Adjust the frequency with which innd reports status information to
syslog. Status reporting is turned off if off or 0 is given
as the argument. Otherwise, status will be reported every
interval seconds. See status in inn.conf(5) for
information on how to set the default.
Close all existing incoming connections and outgoing feeds and reject new
connections. Close the history database. This should be used for
long-term locks or for running a large number of newgroup and
rmgroup commands without restarting all outgoing feeds between each
one. (Note that changing the status of existing newsgroups when the
server is throttled cannot be done.)
If the server was not started with the -n y flag, then this command
also does the equivalent of a readers command with no as the
flag and reason as the text, encoded in UTF-8.
Adjust the frequency with which innd reports performance
information to syslog. Performance monitoring is turned off if off
or 0 is given as the argument. Otherwise, statistics will be
reported every interval seconds to syslog. See timer in
inn.conf(5) for information on how to set the default.
Turn tracing on or off for the specified item. flag
should start with the letter y or n to turn tracing on or
off, respectively. If item starts with a number, tracing is set
up for the specified innd channel, which must be an incoming NNTP
feed. If it starts with the letter i, general innd tracing
is turned on or off. If it starts with the letter n, future
nnrpd processes spawned by innd will or will not be passed
the -t flag, as appropriate. This will not affect any nnrpd
processes already running, or nnrpd processes started by some means
other than innd.
Log the specified reason and then abort. On most systems, this will cause innd to dump a core file. This is only useful for debugging.
Shut down the server, but then rather than exiting, exec innd with
all of its original arguments except for -r. path may be
either innd or an empty string, both of which are equivalent. Any
other value is an error.
This is the easiest way to start a new copy of innd after upgrading
or reload configuration files that can't be reloaded via the reload
command.
In addition to being acted on by the server, certain commands can be
forwarded to an appropriate child process. If the site receiving the
command is an exploder (such as buffchan) or a funnel that feeds
into an exploder, the command can be forwarded. In this case, the server
will send a command line to the exploder that consists of the
ctlinnd command name. If the site funnels into an exploder that
has an asterisk (*) in its W flag (see newsfeeds(5) for more
information on feed specifications), the site name will be appended to the
command; otherwise, no argument is appended.
ctlinnd uses Unix domain sockets on most systems to communicate with innd and is therefore limited by whatever maximum packet size the operating system imposes on Unix domain datagrams. This may mean that server replies are limited to 4 KB on some systems.
Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews. Rewritten in POD by Russ Allbery <eagle@eyrie.org>.
$Id: ctlinnd.pod 9767 2014-12-07 21:13:43Z iulius $
active(5), active.times(5), buffchan(8), incoming.conf(5), innd(8), inndcomm(3), inn.conf(5), newsfeeds(5), nnrpd(8).
| Russ Allbery > Software > INN > INN CURRENT Documentation | innd > |