---
name: "fetch"
section: "8"
platform: "linux"
package: "leafnode"
version: "1.6.2-3"
release: "Debian 2.1 (Slink)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/fetch/8"
---

# fetch(8)

fetch news via NNTP

## NAME

fetch - fetch news via NNTP

## SYNOPSIS

**fetch \[-v\] \[-x number\] \[-l\] \[-n\] \[-f\]**

## DESCRIPTION

**Leafnode** is a USENET package intended for small sites, where there are few users and little disk space, but where a large number of groups is desired.

The design of **leafnode** is intended to self-repair after problems, and to require no manual maintenance.

**Fetch** is the program which submits and retrieves new articles to or from the upstream NNTP server.

## OPTIONS

- *-v*

  Be verbose.  A maximum of four *-v* can be used (the more v, the more verbose):

- *-v*

  Warn about non-critical errors.

- *-vv*

  Be verbose whenever a group command occurs.

- *-vvv*

  Be verbose whenever an article command occurs.

- *-vvvv*

  For debugging purposes. Don't expect the additional output to make sense.

- *-x number*

  Go *number* articles back and try to re-fetch what's missing. Chiefly used for debugging purposes.

- *-l*

  Don't use supplementary servers ( *-l* is supposed to mean "local"). This does speed up the operation quite a bit.

- *-n*

  Don't unlink files in the *interesting.groups* directory. This avoids automatic unsubscription of newsgroups.

- *-f*

  Force rereading of whole active file from all upstream servers. This is usually occurring only very infrequently because it takes a long time.

## FILES AND CONFIGURATION

See [**leafnode**(8)](/leafnode/8.md) for the list of files affected, and for information on configuring **fetch.**

## ALGORITHM

Here is a brief description of what **fetch** does.

First, after connecting to the upstream NNTP server, all articles in */var/spool/news/out.going* are posted using POST.  If a posting fails, that article is moved to */var/spool/news/failed.postings* which an administrator has to clean up once in a while.  Moving a file back to */var/spool/news/out.going* is sufficient to resubmit it.

Second, the upstream server's list of newsgroups (obtained using LIST ACTIVE and LIST NEWSGROUPS) is merged into **leafnode**'s (this step is most often optimized away).

Third, **fetch** iterates over the list of newsgroups, performing a GROUP, an XHDR Message-ID and a number of HEAD and BODY commands for each group which has been read recently.

## NOTES

**Fetch** does not use NEWNEWS or XOVER.  NEWNEWS is not used because it is often very expensive, XOVER is not used because the information it obtains is also present in the article headers.

After some experiments, I decided that it was better to fetch all the articles in a group than to optimize away some; users would complain too loudly when the optmizer guessed wrongly. **Leafnode** is not intended to be all things to all men, and I have sacrificed the ability to read news from two upstream servers.  (There is some support for it, but it is incomplete and undocumented at the time of writing.)

**Fetch** happens to support local groups, even though the rest of **leafnode** doesn't.

The only way to control what newsgroups are accessible to local users is to control what the upstream server lets **fetch** read, and that will not keep out all crossposts (endemic in e.g. the alt.sex groups).  If your site is big enough that you need to control newsgroup access, consider using a news server which is designed for a big site.

**Fetch** sets its real and effective uid to "news", because almost all of the problems I have had with **leafnode** are due to files which aren't writable for user news.

## BUGS

**Fetch** ignores the "Supersedes" and "Also-Cancel" headers.  This needs to be fixed, or news.answers will suffer.

Never deletes a group from the list of active newgroups.

## AUTHOR AND LICENCE

Written by Arnt Gulbrandsen \<agulbra@troll.no\> and copyright 1995-96 Troll Tech AS, Postboks 6133 Etterstad, 0602 Oslo, Norway, fax +47 22646949.

Modified by Cornelius Krasel \<krasel@wpxx02.toxi.uni-wuerzburg.de\>, Markus Enzenberger \<enz@cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de\> and Randolf Skerka \<rskerka@metronet.de\>. Copyright of the modifications 1997, 1998.

Use, modification and distribution is allowed without limitation, warranty, or liability of any kind.

## SEE ALSO

[**tcpd**(8)](/tcpd/8.md), [**hosts.allow**(5)](/hosts.allow/5.md), [**leafnode**(8)](/leafnode/8.md), [**texpire**(8)](/texpire/8.md), **RFC 977**