--- name: "rawdog" section: "1" platform: "linux" package: "rawdog" version: "2.23-2" release: "Debian 10 (Buster)" platforms: ["linux"] url: "https://new.carta.tech/rawdog" --- # rawdog(1) an RSS Aggregator Without Delusions Of Grandeur ## NAME rawdog - an RSS Aggregator Without Delusions Of Grandeur ## SYNOPSIS **rawdog** \[*options*\] ## DESCRIPTION **rawdog** is a feed aggregator for Unix-like systems. **rawdog** uses the Python **feedparser** module to retrieve articles from a number of feeds in RSS, Atom and other formats, and writes out a single HTML file, based on a template either provided by the user or generated by **rawdog**, containing the latest articles it's seen. **rawdog** uses the ETags and Last-Modified headers to avoid fetching a file that hasn't changed, and supports gzip and delta compression to reduce bandwidth when it has. **rawdog** is configured from a simple text file; the only state kept between invocations that can't be reconstructed from the feeds is the ordering of articles. ## OPTIONS This program follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with two dashes (\`-'). ### General Options - **-d** *DIR*, **--dir** *DIR* Use *DIR* instead of the $HOME/.rawdog directory. This option lets you have two or more **rawdog** setups with different configurations and sets of feeds. - **-N**, **--no-locking** Do not lock the state file. - **rawdog** usually claims a lock on its state file, to stop more than one instance from running at the same time. Unfortunately, some filesystems don't support file locking; you can use this option to disable locking entirely if you're in that situation. - **-v**, **--verbose** Print more detailed information about what **rawdog** is doing to stderr while it runs. - **-V** *FILE*, **--log** *FILE* As with **-V**, but write the information to *FILE*. - **-W**, **--no-lock-wait** Exit silently if the state file is already locked. - If the state file is already locked, **rawdog** will normally wait until it becomes available, then run. However, if you're got a lot of feeds and a slow network connection, you might prefer **rawdog** to just give up immediately if the previous instance is still running. ### Actions **rawdog** will perform these actions in the order given. - **-a** *URL*, **--add** *URL* Try to find a feed associated with *URL* and add it to the config file. - *URL* may be a feed itself, or it can be an HTML page that links to a feed in any of a variety of ways. **rawdog** uses heuristics to pick the best feed it can find, and will complain if it can't find one. - **-c** *FILE*, **--config** *FILE* Read *FILE* as an additional config file; any options provided in *FILE* will override those set in the main config file (with the exception of "feed", which is cumulative). *FILE* may be an absolute path or a path relative to your .rawdog directory. - Note that $HOME/.rawdog/config will still be read first even if you specify this option. **-c** is mostly useful when you want to write the same set of feeds out using two different sets of output options. - **-f** *URL*, **--update-feed** *URL* Update the feed pointed to by *URL* immediately, even if its period hasn't elapsed since it was last updated. This is useful when you're publishing a feed yourself, and want to test whether it's working properly. - **-l**, **--list** List brief information about each of the feeds that was known about at the time of the last update. - **-r** *URL*, **--remove** *URL* Remove feed *URL* from the config file. - **-s** *TEMPLATE*, **--show** *TEMPLATE* Print one of the templates currently in use to stdout. **TEMPLATE** may be **page**, **item**, **feedlist** or **feeditem**. This can be used as a starting point if you want to design your own template for use with the corresponding **template** option in the config file. - **-u**, **--update** Fetch data from the feeds and store it. This could take some time if you've got lots of feeds. - **-w**, **--write** Write out the HTML output file. ### Special Actions If one of these options is specified, **rawdog** will perform only that action, then exit. - **--dump** *URL* Show what **rawdog**'s feed parser returns for *URL*. This can be useful when trying to understand why **rawdog** doesn't display a feed correctly. - **--help** Provide a brief summary of all the options **rawdog** supports. ## EXAMPLES **rawdog** is typically invoked from **cron**(1). The following [**crontab**(5)](/crontab/5.md) entry would fetch data from feeds and write it to HTML once an hour, exiting if **rawdog** is already running: ``` 0 * * * * rawdog -Wuw ``` ## FILES $HOME/.rawdog/config ## SEE ALSO **cron**(1). ## AUTHOR **rawdog** was mostly written by Adam Sampson \, with contributions and bug reports from many of **rawdog**'s users. See **rawdog**'s NEWS file for a complete list of contributors. This manual page was originally written by Decklin Foster \, for the Debian project (but may be used by others).