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)