ACTIVE(5)							File Formats Manual							 ACTIVE(5)

NAME

       active, active.times - list of active Usenet newsgroups

DESCRIPTION

       The  file  <pathdb in inn.conf>/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
       monotonically 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 either filed into the newsgroup ``junk'' and only propagated to sites that  receive  the  ``junk''  newsgroup  if  ``wanttrash''
       option in inn.conf(5) is true.  Or it is ignored completely.

       Each line consists of four fields specified by a space:

		      name himark lomark flag

       The  first field is the name of the newsgroup.  If <mergetogroups in inn.conf> is ``true'', newsgroups that start with the three characters
       ``to.'' are treated specially; see innd(8).  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 not be posted to the group, but
       can be received to that group and treated as if they were received 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 cre-
       ated with ctlinnd(8)).  An alias newsgroup should not point to another alias.

       The file <pathdb in inn.conf>/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 1.8.4.2, dated 2000/08/24.

SEE ALSO

       ctlinnd(8), inn.conf(5), innd(8).

																	 ACTIVE(5)