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Name

yawgmoth - helper for mcxmit concerning group selection

Synopsis

yawgmoth [-h]
yawgmoth [-a acl-file] [-c config] [-d level] [-O config_dir]

Description

Yawgmoth is a daemon process that listens for incoming (local) connec- tions from mcxmit programs and tells them after getting a group list on what multicast groups and udp port they should send their articles.

The second purpose is to send packets with group assignments to the IPmulticast group 224.0.1.51 That has been assigned by IANA as mcntpdirectory for this purpose . These packets are interpret by mcrcv(8) to get the information where they can get what newsgroup from. For a infor- mations about these packets see groupdump(1) .

Options to yawgmoth are:

-h
Displays help and exits then.

-a acl-file
Load an access control list from file acl-file and apply the acl to incoming packets. If they are not covered by the list, they are thrown away.

-c config
Read the in config specified configuration file instead of the default yawgmoth.conf

-d level
Yawgmoth does not detach from it's controlling tty, but in- stead prints every received packet to stdout. Increasing level augments the verbosity of the output.

-O conf_dir
To specify a different directory, where the config file mc- ntp.conf can be found instead of the default.

This section describes the format of the yawgmoth.conf file: Each line is one entry. Lines that are empty or start with a hash sign (#) are treated as comment lines. Subentries on a line are separated by a colon (:) There are basically two types of entries: the ME entry and normal group entries. The ME entry must come before the first group entry.

The ME line has the following format:

ME:ttl:id

Ttl gives the ttl for the announcement packets (that is how far they will be distributed). The ttl value also serves as a upper bound for the ttl of the group entries. The ``id'' is the id of the host, yawgmoth is run- ning on. Id can be the entry that the hosts puts on the ``Path:'' line or the fully qualified hostname.

The other entries are in the form:

ngroup:startgroup:numgroups:ttl:action

The meaning of the entries is as follows:

ngroup
The newsgroups this line should apply to in wildmat(3) for- mat. An newsgroup name of * is considered as a fall through that is if no other entry matches, then this value is taken (the * matches all).

startgroup
(This feature is not yet implemented) When The first multi- cast group of a range of groups that will be assigned to the named news group. Format is dotted quad (e.g. 228.1.2.3).

numgroups
(This feature is not yet implemented) When The number of mul- ticast groups that will be used to form a range of groups starting at numgroups. Note that this will never leave Class C boundaries nor wrap around. E.g specifying start- group=a.b.c.250 and numgroups=20 will result in a range of groups from a.b.c.250 until a.b.c.254.

ttl
The ttl, at which multicast packets for the specifyed news- group get sent. If this is larger than the ttl on the ``ME'' line then it is lowered to that value.

action
(This feature is not yet implemented) When yawgmoth receives announcement packets from other yawgmoth daemons, an the news group(s) are in that announcement (that is another one is al- ready sending news in that group(s)), then yawgmoth will act depending on this field. Possible actions are:

go
Tell mxcmit that it can just go on sending.

suspend
Suspend the local mcxmit until the group is no longer in the announcement and tell it then to start sending

stop Instruct mcxmit not to send articles in that group.

The action fields are case insensitive.

Examples

Example yawgmoth.conf:

ME:32:news.some.site.do.main
# comment line
ka.*:239.1.2.1:4:8:go
comp.*:227.1.1.1:2:64:stop
*:228.1.1.1:100:64:go

Note that the ttl in the ``comp'' line is bigger than the ttl in the ``ME'' line and therefore gets stripped down to the value of the ``ME'' line.

Files

yawgmoth.conf -- main configuration file for yawgmoth.

See Also

acltest(1) , groupdump(1) , mcrcv(8) , mcxmit(8) , mcntp(8) , rctest(1) , netstat(1) , tcpdump(8) , acl(3)

History

The yawgmoth command is part of the diploma thesis Transport of NetNews via IP-multicast.

The name is after a card from the card trading game Magic the Gathering as Andrea Warzel (neg@pilhuhn.de) thought, that one can't call a daemon mcctld (which was its first name from multicast control daemon) as such a daemon would always commit suicide because of its name. The name that was given next was erwin. But can you think of a daemon called erwin?

Author

Heiko W.Rupp (hwr@pilhuhn.de)

Bugs

None known yet. If you find any, please report them at the respective tracker at http://sourceforge.net/projects/mcntp/


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