3. Command line switches

The following options can be used when calling slrn from the command line:

-a

Read active file when checking for new news. This can be permanently turned on by setting read_active to 1.

-C

Use colors without checking if the terminal supports it.

-C-

Don't use colors, even if the terminal supports it.

-d

Get group descriptions (taglines) from the news server. Please note that this may cause a download of several hundred kilobytes and thus can take a long time. The output is saved to a local file, so you only need to do this once. May not be specified in combination with ``--create''.

-Dname

Add name to the list of predefined preprocessing tokens, which can be used in your slrnrc file to have conditionally interpreted lines. For example, you can use the following slrnrc entry if you want to read mailing lists (stored as MH mail directories in /home/username/Mail/) with slrn -DMAIL:

        #ifdef MAIL
          set spool_inn_root      "/home/username/Mail"
          set spool_root          "/home/username/Mail"
          set spool_nov_root      "/home/username/Mail"
          set server_object       "spool"
          set read_active         1
          server "/home/username/Mail"  ".jnewsrc.mail"
        #endif

Similarly, you can test if a given environment variable is set:

        #if$DISPLAY
          set editor_command "xjed '%s' -g %d -tmp"
        #endif

-f file

Use file as the newsrc file for this session. This is permanently set via the server configuration command.

-h [snews://]host[:port]

Connect to the NNTP server on host, overriding the $NNTPSERVER environment variable. If no port is given, the default NNTP port (119) will be used. The prefix snews:// indicates that slrn should attempt a secure connection. This will result in an error message when SSL support is not compiled in. Like -p, this option is only accepted after --nntp or when NNTP is the default mode.

-i file

Read file as the initialization (slrnrc) file. The default is to use .slrnrc (or slrn.rc on VMS, OS/2 and Windows) in your home directory.

-k

Don't read the score file.

-k0

Read the score file, but inhibit ``expensive'' scoring. A scoring rule is ``expensive'' if it contains header lines that are not included in the server's overview files. This makes applying them slow.

-n

Do not check for new groups (usually resulting in a faster startup). You can permanently set this via check_new_groups.

-m

Force mouse support (without checking if it works on the current terminal). To permanently activate mouse support, you can use the mouse configuration variable.

-p N

Use port N to connect to the NNTP server.

-w

Wait for a key before switching to full screen mode. This is useful if you want to read the startup messages.

-w0

Like -w, but only waits if a warning or error message occurred on startup (e.g. an expired scorefile entry or a bogus group)

--create

Read the active file (the list of all groups) from the news server to create an initial newsrc file.

--debug file

Write debugging output to file. In NNTP mode, this logs the dialog with the server; the spool backend currently only uses this for error messages.

--help

Show help for command line switches.

--inews

Use an external inews program to post articles.

--kill-log file

Keep a log of all articles that were killed by the scorefile in file.

--nntp

Use builtin NNTP support for reading and posting (an external program is used to post if the ``force inews'' compile time option is set).

--pull

Spool outgoing articles locally for slrnpull to send.

--show-config

Print version, some compile time settings, internal variables after parsing the slrnrc, and environment variables used by slrn.

--spool

Read directly from spool.

--version

Print version and some compile time settings.