distributions - Recommended values for the Distribution header field
The file
pathetc/distributions contains a list of relevant distributions
and their descriptions. It provides local information for posters who wish to
add a Distribution header field to their articles so as to restrict their
propagation, although it does not guarantee that such articles will not leak
elsewhere because of a misconfiguration of a news server to which they are
fed. See
newsfeeds(5) for more information about how a news server
handles the Distribution header field.
Each line of this file consists of a distribution area followed by its
description (encoded in UTF-8) after at least a whitespace. For instance:
fr Local to France.
local Local to this news server.
nj Local to New Jersey.
usa Local to the United States of America.
Blank lines and lines beginning with a number sign ("#") are ignored.
Any client that issues the LIST DISTRIBUTIONS command obtain these recommended
values, if available. However, be aware that use of the LIST DISTRIBUTIONS
command is not widespread (though documented in RFC 6048) and most news
clients will never ask for this file.
If this file is empty, it is not an error. The server will just send the client
an empty response. And if the file is missing, the server will also send the
client an appropriate response to indicate that the distributions list is not
maintained on the server.
The Distribution header field can also be automatically set by
nnrpd if
distrib.pats(5) is correctly configured.
Written by Julien Elie for InterNetNews.
distrib.pats(5),
newsfeeds(5),
nnrpd(8).