makeactive(8) [debian man page]
MAKEACTIVE(8) System Manager's Manual MAKEACTIVE(8) NAME
makeactive - tool to recover Usenet active file. SYNOPSIS
makeactive [ -m ] [ -o ] DESCRIPTION
Makeactive invokes find(1) to get a list of all directories in the news spool tree, /var/spool/news. It discards directories named lost+found as well as those that have a period in them. It scans all other directories for all-numeric filenames and determines the high- est and lowest number. The program's output is a set of active(5) file lines. Because there is no way to know if a group is moderated or disabled, the fourth field of all entries will be y. Also, mid-level directories that aren't newsgroups will also created as newsgroups with no entries (for example, there is a ``comp.sources.unix'' group, but no ``comp.sources''). OPTIONS
-m If the ``-m'' flag is given, then makeactive will attempt to adjust the highest and lowest article numbers wherever possible. If articles are found in a newsgroup, the numbers will reflect what what was found. If no articles are found in a newsgroup, the high number from the old file will be kept, and the low number will be set to one more then the high number. This flag may only be used if the ``-o'' flag is used. -o If the ``-o'' flag is used, makeactive will read an existing active file for the list of group names and just renumber all groups. It will preserve the fourth field of the active file if one is present. This is analogous to the ctlinnd(8) ``renumber'' command, except that innd(8) should throttled or not running. Do not use this flag with output redirected to the standard active file! EXIT STATUS
Makeactive exits with non-zero status if any problems occurred. EXAMPLES
A typical way to use the program is with the following /bin/sh commands: ctlinnd throttle "Rebuilding active file" TEMP=${TMPDIR-/var/spool/news/in.coming/tmp}/act$$ if [ -f /var/lib/news/active ] ; then if makeactive -o >${TEMP} ; then mv ${TEMP} /var/lib/news/active fi else if makeactive >${TEMP} ; then # Edit to restore moderated # and aliased groups. ... mv ${TEMP} /var/lib/news/active fi fi ctlinnd reload active "New active file" ctlinnd go '' HISTORY
Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews. This is revision 1.3, dated 1996/10/29. SEE ALSO
active(5), ctlinnd(8), dbz(3), filechan(8), history(5), innd(8), newsfeeds(5), makehistory(8), newsrequeue(8). MAKEACTIVE(8)
Check Out this Related Man Page
ACTIVE(5) File Formats Manual ACTIVE(5) NAME
active, active.times - list of active Usenet newsgroups DESCRIPTION
The file /var/lib/news/active lists the newsgroups that the local site receives. Each newsgroup should be listed only once. Each line specifies one group; their order in the file does not matter. Within each newsgroup, articles are assigned unique names, which are mono- tonically increasing numbers. If an article is posted to newsgroups not mentioned in this file, those newsgroups are ignored. If no valid newsgroups are specified, the article is filed into the newsgroup ``junk'' and only propagated to sites that receive the ``junk'' newsgroup. Each line consists of four fields specified by a space: name himark lomark flags The first field is the name of the newsgroup. The second field is the highest article number that has been used in that newsgroup. The third field is the lowest article number in the group; this number is not guaranteed to be accurate, and should only be taken to be a hint. Note that because of article cancellations, there may be gaps in the numbering sequence. If the lowest article number is greater then the highest article number, then there are no articles in the newsgroup. In order to make it possible to update an entry in-place without rewriting the entire file, the second and third fields are padded out with leading zeros to make them a fixed width. The fourth field can contain one of the following flags: y Local postings are allowed n No local postings are allowed, only remote ones m The group is moderated and all postings must be approved j Articles in this group are not kept, but only passed on x Articles cannot be posted to this newsgroup =foo.bar Articles are locally filed into the ``foo.bar'' group If a newsgroup has the ``j'' flag, then no articles will be filed into that newsgroup and local postings to that group should not be gener- ated. If an article for such a newsgroup is received from a remote site, it will be filed into the ``junk'' newsgroup if it is not cross- posted. This is different from not having a newsgroup listed in the file because sites can subscribe to ``j'' newsgroups and the article will be propagated to them. If the fourth field of a newsgroup starts with an equal sign, then the newsgroup is an alias. Articles can be posted to the group, but will be treated as if they were posted to the group named after the equal sign. The second and third fields are ignored. Note that the Newsgroup header is not modified (Alias groups are typically used during a transition, and are typically created with ctlinnd(8)). An alias newsgroup should not point to another alias. The file /var/lib/news/active.times provides a chronological record of when newsgroups are created. This file is normally updated by innd(8) whenever a ctlinnd ``newgroup'' command is done. Each line consist of three fields: name time creator The first field is the name of the newsgroup. The second field is the time it was created, expressed as the number of seconds since the epoch -- i.e., a time_t; see gettimeofday(2). The third field is the electronic mail address of the person who created the group. HISTORY
Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews. This is revision 1.13, dated 1996/10/29. SEE ALSO
ctlinnd(8), innd(8). ACTIVE(5)