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NINPATHS(8)		  InterNetNews Documentation		   NINPATHS(8)

NAME
       ninpaths	- Report Usenet	Path header field statistics (new inpaths)

SYNOPSIS
       ninpaths	-p -d dumpfile

       ninpaths	-r site	-u dumpfile [-u	dumpfile ...] -v level

DESCRIPTION
       This is an efficient and	space-saving inpaths reporting program.	 It
       works as	follows: you feed it the Path header fields via	an INN channel
       feed or some other similar method, and from time	to time	the program
       writes all its internal counters	accumulated so far to a	dump file.
       Another instance	of the program picks up	all the	dump files, adds them
       up and formats them into	the report.  The purpose of the	final report
       is to summarize the frequency of	occurrence of sites in the Path	header
       fields of articles.

       Some central sites accumulate the Path header field data	from many news
       servers running this program or one like	it, and	then report statistics
       on the most frequently seen news	servers	in Usenet article Path header
       fields.	The sendinpaths	script can be run daily	to mail	the
       accumulated statistics to such a	site and remove	the old	dump files.

       You can get a working setup by doing the	following:

       1.  Create  a  directory	at pathlog/path	(replacing pathlog here	and in
	   all	steps  that  follow  with  the	full  path  to	your  INN  log
	   directory).	 Do  not  change  the  name of the "path" subdirectory
	   because it is used by sendinpaths.

       2.  Set up a channel feed using a newsfeeds entry like:

	       inpaths!\
		   :*\
		   :Tc,WP:<pathbin>/ninpaths -p	-d <pathlog>/path/inpaths.%d

	   if your version of INN  supports  "WP"  (2.0	 and  later  all  do).
	   Replace   <pathbin>	with  the  full	 path  to  your	 INN  binaries
	   directory, and <pathlog>  with  the	full  path  to	your  INN  log
	   directory.

	   Note	that the naming	convention of the generated inpaths dump files
	   should not be changed.  sendinpaths explicitly searches files whose
	   name	starts with "inpaths." in the <pathlog>/path directory.

       3.  Run the following command to	start logging these statistics:

	       ctlinnd reload newsfeeds	'inpaths feed setup'

       4.  Enter into your news	user crontab these two lines:

	       6   6 * * *   <pathbin>/ctlinnd flush inpaths!
	       10  6 * * *   <pathbin>/sendinpaths

	   (the	 actual	 time  doesn't	matter).   This	will force ninpaths to
	   generate a dump file	once  a	 day.	Then,  a  few  minutes	later,
	   sendinpaths collects	the dumps, makes a report, sends the collected
	   statistics, and deletes the old dumps.

	   Note	 that  you  can	manually generate a report without mailing it,
	   and without deleting	processed dump files, with  "sendinpaths  -n".
	   Another  useful command is "sendinpaths -c" so as to	receive	a copy
	   of the e-mail sent by sendinpaths  and  therefore  make  sure  that
	   everything is properly set.

       5.  In  a  couple  of  days,  check that	your daily statistics properly
	   appear in <http://top1000.anthologeek.net/>.

OPTIONS
       -d dumpfile
	   Save	dumps in dumpfile.  Any	%d in dumpfile will be	replaced  with
	   the	current	system time when the dump is made.  This option	should
	   be used with	-p.  If	dumpfile is "-", then stdout is	used.

	   The format of these dump files is described below.

       -p  Read	Path header fields from	standard input.

       -r site
	   Generate a report for site.	Generally site should be the value  of
	   pathhost from inn.conf.

       -u dumpfile
	   Read	 data from dumpfile.  This option can be repeated to read data
	   from	multiple dump files.

       -v level
	   Set the verbosity level of the report.  Valid values	for level  are
	   0, 1, and 2,	with 2 being the default.

DUMP FILE FORMAT
       The format of the generated dump	files is:

	  !!NINP <version> <start-time>	<end-time> <nb-sites> <nb-articles>
	      <average-time>
	  <site_0> <count_0> <site_1> <count_1>	<site_2> <count_2> ...
	  !!NLREC
	  :<site_a>!<site_b>,<count_ab>:<site_c>!<site_d>,<count_cd> ...
	  !!NEND <nb-relations>

       where  times are	UNIX timestamps.  Then,	nb-sites records follow.  Each
       record is separated by a	space or a new line, and consists  of  a  host
       name site_n followed by a number	of appearances count_n.	 The number of
       processed Path header fields is nb-articles.

       Afterwards,  nb-relations  relations  follow.   In  3.0.x versions, the
       relations are separated by a space or a new line, and their  syntax  is
       "site_a!site_b!count_ab"	 where	site_a	and  site_b are	numbers	of the
       site records starting at	0.

       In 3.1.x	versions, the relations	begin with a colon and	are  separated
       by    either    nothing	  or	a   new	  line.	   Their   syntax   is
       ":site_a!site_b,count_ab"  with	the  same  meaning  as	 in   previous
       versions.   The count can be omitted when it is 1.  More	than two sites
       can be specified	in the relation	(":site_a!site_b!site_c,count_abc").

       For instance:

	   !!NINP 3.1.1	1302944821 1302944838 5	2 1302944826
	   newsgate.cistron.nl 1 news.trigofacile.com 2	news.ecp.fr 2
	       usenet.stanford.edu 1
	   bleachbot 1
	   !!NLREC
	   :3!2:2!1,2:4!0:0!2
	   !!NLEND 4

       where the two processed Path header fields are:

	   Path: news.trigofacile.com!news.ecp.fr!usenet.stanford.edu
	       !not-for-mail
	   Path: news.trigofacile.com!news.ecp.fr!newsgate.cistron.nl
	       !bleachbot!not-for-mail

NOTES
       If your INN doesn't have	the "WP" feed flag (1.5	does not, 1.6 and  1.7
       do, 2.0 and later all do), use the following newsfeeds entry:

	  inpaths!:*:Tc,WH:<pathbin>/ginpaths

       where ginpaths is the following script:

	   #!/bin/sh
	   exec	egrep '^Path: '	\
	       | <pathbin>/ninpaths -p -d <pathlog>/path/inpaths.%d

       replacing <pathbin> and <pathlog> as above.

HISTORY
       This  is	 a  slightly modified version of Olaf Titz's original ninpaths
       program,	which is posted	to alt.sources and kept	 on  his  WWW  archive
       under <http://sites.inka.de/~bigred/sw/>.

       The  idea  and  some  implementation details for	ninpaths come from the
       original	inpaths	program, but most of the code has been	rewritten  for
       clarity.	 This program is in the	public domain.

SEE ALSO
       newsfeeds(5), sendinpaths(8).

INN 2.8.0			  2024-05-19			   NINPATHS(8)

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