Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)

FreeBSD Manual Pages

  
 
  

home | help
EXPIREOVER(8)		  InterNetNews Documentation		 EXPIREOVER(8)

NAME
       expireover - Expire entries from	the news overview database

SYNOPSIS
       expireover [-ekNpqs] [-f	file] [-w offset] [-z rmfile] [-Z lowmarkfile]

DESCRIPTION
       expireover expires old entries from the news overview database.	It
       reads in	a list of newsgroups (by default from pathdb/active, but a
       different file can be specified with the	-f option) and then removes
       from the	overview database mentions of any articles that	no longer
       exist in	the news spool.

       If groupbaseexpiry in inn.conf is true, expireover also removes old
       articles	from the news spool according to the expiration	rules in
       expire.ctl.  Otherwise it only removes overview entries for articles
       that have already been removed by some other process, and -e, -k, -N,
       -p, -q, -w, and -z are all ignored.

       When groupbaseexpiry is set, the	default	behavior of expireover is to
       remove the article from the spool once it expires out of	all of the
       newsgroups to which it was crossposted.	The article is,	however,
       removed from the	overview database of each newsgroup as soon as it
       expires out of that individual newsgroup.  The effect is	that an
       article crossposted to several groups will be removed from the overview
       database	from each group	one-by-one as its age passes the expiration
       threshold for that group	as set in expire.ctl, and then when it expires
       out of the last newsgroup, it will be deleted from the news spool.

       Articles	that are stored	in self-expiring storage backends such as CNFS
       are normally treated differently	and not	expired	until they expire out
       of the backend regardless of expire.ctl.	 See -N, however.

       By default, expireover purges all overview information for newsgroups
       that have been removed from the server; this behavior is	suppressed if
       -f is given.

OPTIONS
       -e  Remove  articles  from the news spool and all overview databases as
	   soon	as they	expire out of any newsgroup to which they are  posted,
	   rather  than	 retain	 them until they expire	out of all newsgroups.
	   -e and -k cannot be used at the same	time.  This flag is ignored if
	   groupbaseexpiry is false.

       -f file
	   Use file as the newsgroup list instead of pathdb/active.  file  can
	   be  "-" to indicate standard	input.	Using this flag	suppresses the
	   normal purge	of all overview	information from newsgroups that  have
	   been	removed	from the server.

       -k  Retain  all	overview  information  for  an article,	as well	as the
	   article itself, until it expires out	of all newsgroups to which  it
	   was posted.	This can cause articles	to stick around	in a newsgroup
	   for	longer	than  the  expire.ctl  rules  indicate,	 when  they're
	   crossposted.	 -e and	-k cannot be used at the same time.  This flag
	   is ignored if groupbaseexpiry is false.

       -N  Apply expire.ctl rules to expire articles even from storage methods
	   that	have self-expire functionality.	 This may remove articles from
	   self-expiring  storage  methods  before  the	 articles  "naturally"
	   expire.  This flag is ignored if groupbaseexpiry is false.

       -p  By  default,	 expireover  bases  decisions  on whether to remove an
	   article on the  arrival  time  on  the  server.   This  means  that
	   articles  may  be  kept  a  little longer than if the decision were
	   based on the	article's posting date.	  If  this  option  is	given,
	   expiration decisions	are based on the article posting date instead.
	   This	flag is	ignored	if groupbaseexpiry is false.

       -q  expireover  normally	prints statistics at the end of	the expiration
	   process.  -q	suppresses this	 report.   This	 flag  is  ignored  if
	   groupbaseexpiry is false.

       -s  expireover  normally	 only  checks the existence of articles	in the
	   news	spool if querying the storage method for that article  to  see
	   if  it  still  exists is considered "inexpensive".  To always check
	   the existence of all	articles regardless of how  resource-intensive
	   this	 may  be,  use	the  -s	 flag.	 See  storage.conf(5) for more
	   information about this metric.

       -w offset
	   "Warps" time	so that	expireover thinks that it's  running  at  some
	   time	 other	than the current time.	This is	occasionally useful to
	   force  groups  to  be  expired  or  not  expired  without  changing
	   expire.ctl  for the expire run.  offset should be a signed floating
	   point number	specifying the number  of  days	 difference  from  the
	   current   time   to	 use  as  "now".   This	 flag  is  ignored  if
	   groupbaseexpiry is false.

       -z rmfile
	   Don't remove	articles immediately but instead write the path	to the
	   article or the token	of the article to rmfile,  which  is  suitable
	   input  for  fastrm(1).  This	can substantially speed	up deletion of
	   expired articles for	those storage methods where each article is  a
	   single  file	(such as tradspool and timehash).  See the description
	   of the delayrm keyword in news.daily(8)  for	 more  details.	  This
	   flag	is ignored if groupbaseexpiry is false.

       -Z lowmarkfile
	   Write the lowest article numbers for	each newsgroup as it's expired
	   to  the  specified  file.   This file is then suitable for "ctlinnd
	   lowmark".  See ctlinnd(8) for more information.

EXAMPLES
       Normally	expireover is invoked from news.daily(8), which	 handles  such
       things	as   processing	 the  rmfile  and  lowmarkfile	if  necessary.
       Sometimes it's convenient to manually expire  a	particular  newsgroup,
       however.	 This can be done with a command like:

	   echo	example.test | expireover -f - -Z <pathtmp in inn.conf>/lowmark
	   ctlinnd lowmark <pathtmp>/lowmark

       This  can  be  particularly useful if a lot of articles in a particular
       group have expired but  the  overview  information  is  still  present,
       causing	some  clients  to  see	a  lot	of "this article may have been
       cancelled" messages when	they first enter the newsgroup.

HISTORY
       Written	by  Rob	 Robertson  <rob@violet.berkeley.edu>  and  Rich  $alz
       <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> (with help from Dave Lawrence <tale@uunet.uu.net>)
       for InterNetNews.

SEE ALSO
       active(5),    ctlinnd(8),    expire(8),	 expire.ctl(5),	  inn.conf(5),
       news.daily(8).

INN 2.8.0			  2021-09-13			 EXPIREOVER(8)

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=expireover&sektion=8&manpath=FreeBSD+Ports+14.3.quarterly>

home | help