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IFMAIL(8)		    System Manager's Manual		     IFMAIL(8)

NAME
       ifmail -	Convert	RFC-822	and RFC-1036 mail/news to FTN Fidonet packets.

       ifnews -	Convert	RFC-1036 Usenet	news to	FTN Fidonet packets.

Synopsis
       ifmail  [-h]   [-x verbosity]  [-I file]	 [-n]  [-r Address] [-g	grade]
       receipent ...

       ifnews [-h]  [-x	verbosity]  [-I	file]  [-r Address] [-g	 grade]	  [re-
       ceipent]

Description
       Ifmail  converts	 RFC-822 compliant mail	and RFC-1036 compliant news to
       FTN packets. It must run	setuid owner of	fidonet	 related  stuff.   The
       current packet naming is	BinkleyTerm, with file/directory names in low-
       case. Naming conventions	are implemented	in a separate source file, pk-
       tname.c,	to make	modifications easier.

       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 rout-
       ing 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  ex-
       pected 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  ad-
       dress.

       ATTENTION:  This	 mechanism  will not work if you specify fidonet-style
       address as the "visible name" in	your MTA.  Do not do it!  Even if  you
       don't have an official Internet domain, use something.uucp as your pri-
       mary machine name, NOT fN.nM.zL.fidonet.org.

       Several addresses may be	specified in the config	file, netmail from fi-
       donet 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  lo-
       cally.	Not passing to the Internet and	back, but if a fileattach net-
       mail 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 mes-
       sage 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.

OPTIONS
       -h      Display a short help message.

       -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.

       -I File	    Use	the alternate configuration file File.

       -n	Set  news mode for processing RFC-1036 Usenet news rather than
       RFC-822 electronic mail.

       -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

FILES
       $IFLIBDIR/config	     Runtime configuration file.

SEE ALSO
       ifcico(8), ifpack(8), ifunpack(8), iftoss(8)

Acknowledgements
       Some  ideas  taken from Fidogate/RFmail package,	written	by Teemu Torma
       and hacked by Martin Junius.  Some modeules  taken  from	 INN  package.
       Thanks  to Michael Bravo	<mbravo@tctube.spb.su> (who was	the first) and
       many others for testing.

       1993, 1994 Eugene Crosser

       This is free software. You can do what you wish with it as long as this
       copyright notice	is preserved.

4th Berkeley Distribution					     IFMAIL(8)

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