rpipe
Table of Contents
1 Overview
Rpipe is a simple tool for forwarding the content of a local file to the stdin of a program running on a remote host via TCP. The tool was created as a prog mailer to deliver messages to a docker container running GNU Mailman 2.x1.
Rpipe implements a slightly modified version of TCPMUX2 protocol. The same
binary (rpipe) serves both as a server (on the remote end) and as a
client (on the local end). See the Example section below.
2 Istallation
To build and install the packaged version, the usual procedure applies:
./configure make sudo make install
There is a number of options that modify the behaviod of configure. The
most important of them is --prefix, which sets the installation prefix
directory. By default, that directory is /usr/local, which means
that the rpipe binary will be installed in /usr/local/bin. To
install it in /usr/bin, run
./configure --prefix=/usr
For a detailed description of the installation procedure, refer to the documentation of configure.
3 Downloads
Packaged releases of rpipe are available for download from https://download.gnu.org.ua/release/rpipe/.
The recent releases are:
- rpipe-1.8.tar.gz (sig), 2021-05-17
- Checksums (MD5, SHA1):
6e2edc913e4b78f1272d3831ac67d287 rpipe-1.8.tar.gz 534794957e8f4e4b89eda40984a25be0579c340e rpipe-1.8.tar.gz
- rpipe-1.7.tar.gz (sig), 2021-05-12
- Checksums (MD5, SHA1):
848f3ccf11df8f4b7a16e83dd4941f6e rpipe-1.7.tar.gz 8935213d7b8d62302fc15567279896ebfff22b16 rpipe-1.7.tar.gz
- rpipe-1.6.tar.gz (sig), 2021-05-09
- Checksums (MD5, SHA1):
9dab739e79cbb386821f8b290aabd0ac rpipe-1.6.tar.gz 730939e1ea8db26dedfdd163776918a38910e518 rpipe-1.6.tar.gz
Use the PGP signature files (marked as sig in the listing above) to
verify that the corresponding tarball is intact. First, import the
author's PGP key:
gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 3602B07F55D0C732
Then, run the following command:
gpg --verify rpipe-1.5.tar.gz.sig
4 Example
The following configuration allows the system administrator to run mailman 2.x in a docker container and to distribute messages via the usual list mechanism using MTA on the host machine.
4.1 Server configuration
The container exposes TCP port 1 and runs the following command:
/usr/bin/rpipe -s -vv -udaemon -gsmmsp /opt/mailman/mail/mailman
The -s option tells it to run as a server. The two -v options select
maximal output verbosity. Diagnostics will be issued to the standard
error. The -u and -g options specify the user and group to run mailman
as. The only non-optional argument supplies the full pathname to the
binary to run when a request is accepted from the client.
For a detailed description of rpipe command line options, see rpipe(1).
The rpipe utility runs in foreground.
4.2 Client configuration
Normally Mailman-based mailing lists are configured as follows (using sendmail-style aliases):
some-list: "|/opt/mailman/mail/mailman post some-list" some-list-admin: "|/opt/mailman/mail/mailman admin some-list" ...
Just replace the program name after the pipe symbol, so that your list setup becomes:
some-list: "|/usr/bin/rpipe -a 172.17.0.2 post some-list" some-list-admin: "|/usr/bin/rpipe -a 172.17.0.2 admin some-list" ...
Replace 172.17.0.2 with the actual IP of the container.
5 Documentation
The documentaion for rpipe is available online.
6 Other references:
7 Bug reports
If you think you found a bug in rpipe or in its documentation, please send a mail to Sergey Poznyakoff or use the web bug tracker.
8 License
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.