Return to expire.8 CVS log

Up to [CSRG BSD Unix] / 43BSD / contrib / news / man

Annotation of 43BSD/contrib/news/man/expire.8, revision 1.1

1.1     ! root        1: .if n .ds La '
        !             2: .if n .ds Ra '
        !             3: .if t .ds La `
        !             4: .if t .ds Ra '
        !             5: .if n .ds Lq "
        !             6: .if n .ds Rq "
        !             7: .if t .ds Lq ``
        !             8: .if t .ds Rq ''
        !             9: .de Ch
        !            10: \\$3\\*(Lq\\$1\\*(Rq\\$2
        !            11: ..
        !            12: .TH EXPIRE 8 "February 14, 1986"
        !            13: .ds ]W  Version B 2.10.3
        !            14: .SH NAME
        !            15: expire \- remove outdated news articles
        !            16: .SH SYNOPSIS
        !            17: .BR /usr/lib/news/expire " [ " \-n
        !            18: .IR newsgroups " ] ["
        !            19: .BR \-i " ] [ " \-I " ] ["
        !            20: .BR \-a " ] ["
        !            21: .BI \-v " level"
        !            22: ] [
        !            23: .B \-p
        !            24: ]
        !            25: .br
        !            26:                        [
        !            27: .B \-h
        !            28: ] [
        !            29: .B \-r
        !            30: ] [
        !            31: .BI \-e " days"
        !            32: ] [
        !            33: .BI \-E " days"
        !            34: ]
        !            35: .br
        !            36: .B /usr/lib/news/expire
        !            37: .BI \-f " [email protected]"
        !            38: .br
        !            39: .B /usr/lib/news/expire
        !            40: .B \-u
        !            41: .SH DESCRIPTION
        !            42: .PP
        !            43: .I Expire
        !            44: is the program that removes out-of-date news articles from your system.
        !            45: You need to use a special program to do this, instead of just using
        !            46: .I find(1)
        !            47: or
        !            48: .I rm(1),
        !            49: because of the history file. If you just delete messages, then the history
        !            50: file will become incorrect because it will think that they are still there.
        !            51: .PP
        !            52: The normal use of
        !            53: .I expire
        !            54: is to run it at regular intervals with no options.
        !            55: It will remove all articles whose expiration date has passed.
        !            56: If you have a lot of disk space, you can run it once a week. If disk space is
        !            57: tight, you might want to run it every night. The length of time that it takes
        !            58: to run depends, of course, on many factors; on a VAX 750 with a 15-day
        !            59: expiration period and the volume of news that is typical in 1986 (about 5000
        !            60: articles per week),
        !            61: .I expire
        !            62: will take roughly an hour to run.
        !            63: .PP
        !            64: .I Expire
        !            65: has the following options:
        !            66: .TP
        !            67: .B \-n
        !            68: Specify certain newsgroups whose articles will be expired. The other
        !            69: newsgroups will be left alone. The notation that you use with the \-n option
        !            70: is quite similar to that used in the sys file. To expire only the articles in
        !            71: net.origins, leaving everything else alone, type this:
        !            72: .nf
        !            73:        /usr/lib/news/expire \-n net.origins
        !            74: .fi
        !            75: To expire only the articles in net.micro, but leave net.micro.pc and
        !            76: net.micro.mac alone, type this:
        !            77: .nf
        !            78:        /usr/lib/news/expire \-n net.micro !net.micro.mac !net.micro.pc
        !            79: .fi
        !            80: For compatibility with the syntax of the sys file, you can also type the
        !            81: command this way, with commas instead of spaces between the fields.
        !            82: .nf
        !            83:        /usr/lib/news/expire \-n net.micro,!net.micro.mac,!net.micro.pc
        !            84: .fi
        !            85: If you have certain groups that you use as archives, which should never have
        !            86: their articles expired, you must construct an
        !            87: .I expire
        !            88: command that mentions all groups except your archive groups. When doing this,
        !            89: be sure not to forget the groups
        !            90: .Ch junk ,
        !            91: .Ch control ,
        !            92: and
        !            93: .Ch general .
        !            94: A likely command would be:
        !            95: .nf
        !            96:        /usr/lib/news/expire \-n all,!local.source,!mod.sources
        !            97: .fi
        !            98: .TP
        !            99: .B \-e
        !           100: Specify an expiration period. Normally
        !           101: .I expire
        !           102: removes articles that are older than 15 days. If you would like it to remove
        !           103: articles that are older than 5 days, you can type
        !           104: .nf
        !           105:        /usr/lib/news/expire \-e 5
        !           106: .fi
        !           107: If you would like it to remove articles from net.religion and net.politics
        !           108: that are older than
        !           109: 23 days, and leave everything else alone, you can type
        !           110: .nf
        !           111:        /usr/lib/news/expire \-e 23 \-n net.religion net.politics
        !           112: .fi
        !           113: You can specify the \-e option as \-e15 instead of as \-e\ 15 if you want;
        !           114: this is for compatibility with old versions and old habits.
        !           115: .TP
        !           116: \-E
        !           117: Normally
        !           118: .I expire
        !           119: removes the record of an article from the history file at the same time it
        !           120: removes the article. One of the purposes of the history file is to prevent
        !           121: articles from being duplicated if a second copy arrives a while later,
        !           122: perhaps over some other path. If your site is extremely short on disk space,
        !           123: forcing you to specify a short expiration period in the \-e option, you can
        !           124: use the \-E option to ask that the information in the history file be kept
        !           125: round a bit longer, until the danger of duplicate arrival has passed. The
        !           126: command
        !           127: .nf
        !           128:        /usr/lib/news/expire \-e 7 \-E 21
        !           129: .fi
        !           130: Causes articles that are 7 or more days old to be removed, and history
        !           131: information that is 21 or more days old to be removed. If you use the \-E
        !           132: option, make sure that the value it specifies is always larger than the \-e
        !           133: option value, else you will end up with articles that are not in the history
        !           134: file; this can cause problems.
        !           135: .TP
        !           136: .B \-a
        !           137: Asks that articles be archived (usually in /usr/spool/oldnews) instead of being deleted.
        !           138: An example of its use would be
        !           139: .nf
        !           140:        /usr/lib/news/expire \-e 30 \-a net.sources,mod.sources,!net.sources.bugs
        !           141: .fi
        !           142: .B \-a 
        !           143: may be used with 
        !           144: .B \-n .
        !           145: If no pattern is given for 
        !           146: .B \-a ,
        !           147: all newsgroups specified by 
        !           148: .B \-n
        !           149: will be archived.
        !           150: .TP
        !           151: .B \-I
        !           152: instructs
        !           153: .I expire
        !           154: to ignore expiration dates stored in articles, and to look at the number of
        !           155: days that have passed since the article was received. Not very many articles
        !           156: have expiration dates in them.
        !           157: .TP
        !           158: .B \-i
        !           159: is like \-I, but it will look at the number of days that have passed and also
        !           160: at the explicit expiration date, and it will remove the article if either of
        !           161: those has passed.
        !           162: .TP
        !           163: \-v
        !           164: sets the verbosity mode. If you have specified a complex collection of
        !           165: options and they are not having the effect that you would like, then set \-v2
        !           166: or \-v3 to find out what is going on. Values from 0 to 6 are meaningful, and
        !           167: \-v1 is the default. \-v0 will turn off messages, and \-v6 will cause
        !           168: .I expire
        !           169: to print every possible message.
        !           170: .TP
        !           171: \-p
        !           172: causes
        !           173: .I expire
        !           174: to use the date the article was posted, rather than the date it arrived at
        !           175: your machine, as the basis for expiration. Every now and then there is a
        !           176: .Ch "time warp"
        !           177: that causes a batch of very very old news to be dumped onto the
        !           178: network; judicious use of the \-p option can eradicate it.
        !           179: .TP
        !           180: \-f
        !           181: asks
        !           182: .I expire
        !           183: to remove messages sent by a particular user, regardless of the newsgroup
        !           184: that they are in, and regardless of how old they are.
        !           185: This option is intended not so much to selectively censor
        !           186: voluminous posters (though it has certainly been used for that) but to
        !           187: recover when a
        !           188: .I notesfiles
        !           189: site (running different news software) accidentally releases a duplicate
        !           190: batch of old news. An example of its use is
        !           191: .nf
        !           192:        /usr/lib/news/expire \-f [email protected]
        !           193: .fi
        !           194: Any article whose From: field exactly matches the argument to the \-f option
        !           195: will be removed.
        !           196: .TP
        !           197: \-h
        !           198: causes
        !           199: .I expire
        !           200: to ignore the history file, and do its expiration by looking at every article
        !           201: file in the spool directory. This is phenomenally slow\(emit can take 5 or 6
        !           202: hours on an otherwise idle Vax 750\(embut if your history file is damaged and
        !           203: you cannot use
        !           204: .I find(1)
        !           205: because you are relying on expiration dates stored inside articles, then you
        !           206: have no other choice.
        !           207: .TP
        !           208: \-r
        !           209: causes
        !           210: .I expire
        !           211: to rebuild the history file in addition to doing expiration.  The \-r option
        !           212: implies the \-h option; it scans every article in the spool directory and
        !           213: builds a new set of history and
        !           214: .I dbm(3X)
        !           215: files. It also performs expiration, so if you want to rebuild the history
        !           216: file while preserving all articles (as you might want to do on an archival
        !           217: file computer), you must specify
        !           218: .nf
        !           219:        /usr/lib/news/expire \-r \-I \-e 999999
        !           220: .fi
        !           221: to prevent expiration from taking place.
        !           222: If you do not rely on expiration dates stored inside articles, it is a good
        !           223: tonic to run the following sequence of commands once every now and then:
        !           224: .nf
        !           225:        find /usr/spool/news \-size 0 \-o \-mtime +90 \-exec rm \-f {} \;
        !           226:        /usr/lib/news/expire \-r
        !           227: .fi
        !           228: This will remove junk files that have somehow managed to find their way into
        !           229: the spooling directory, and then it will rebuild the history file.
        !           230: .TP
        !           231: \-u
        !           232: causes the minimum article-number field in the active file to be updated.
        !           233: This is used when converting from 2.10.1 news to later versions.
        !           234: .SH SEE ALSO
        !           235: inews(1),
        !           236: postnews(1),
        !           237: getdate(3),
        !           238: news(5),
        !           239: recnews(8),
        !           240: sendnews(8),
        !           241: uurec(8)
        !           242: .SH BUGS
        !           243: If
        !           244: .I inews(1)
        !           245: is run while
        !           246: .I expire
        !           247: is running, it can cause the article that inews is trying to insert to be
        !           248: absent from your history file. There is no automatic interlock between
        !           249: .I inews(1)
        !           250: and
        !           251: .I expire,
        !           252: so you must take care to turn off
        !           253: .I inews(1)
        !           254: while
        !           255: .I expire
        !           256: is running. This bug will likely be fixed soon, but for the moment be careful
        !           257: of it.
        !           258: .PP
        !           259: The newsgroup pattern argument to the \-n option is limited to 1024
        !           260: characters, which is about 8 lines of text.

This archive runs on limited infrastructure. Preserving old code on modern bandwidth. Automated agents are requested to crawl responsibly.