active.times(5) [suse man page]

ACTIVE.TIMES(5) 					    InterNetNews Documentation						   ACTIVE.TIMES(5)

NAME

       active.times - List of local creation times of newsgroups

DESCRIPTION

       The file pathdb/active.times provides a chronological record of when newsgroups were created on the local server.  This file is normally
       updated by mod-active and innd whenever a newgroup control message is processed or a "ctlinnd newgroup" command is issued, and is used by
       nnrpd to answer NEWGROUPS requests.

       Each line consists 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.  The third field is plain text intended to describe the entity that created the newsgroup.  This field is encoded in UTF-8 and is
       usually the e-mail address of the person who created the group, as specified in the control message or on the ctlinnd command line, or the
       newsmaster specified at configure time if no creator argument was given to ctlinnd (by default, it is "usenet").

       You can get the active.times file of another NNTP server with getlist(1).

EXAMPLE

       The line:

	  news.admin.moderation 1175716803 <group-admin@isc.org>

       shows that the newsgroup news.admin.moderation was created on April 4th, 2007, at 20:00:03 UTC.	This date can be obtained for instance
       with "convdate -c 1175716803" (convdate(1) is shipped with INN) or "date -u -d "Jan 1, 1970 00:00:00 +0000 + 1175716803 seconds"".  It is
       when the newsgroup was locally created; in this example, it is when a control message sent by "group-admin@isc.org" was received and
       processed by the news server (see control.ctl(5) for more details).  Therefore, the time is not necessarily the same on every news server.

HISTORY

       Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews.  Converted to POD by Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>.

       $Id: active.times.pod 8638 2009-09-28 19:59:48Z iulius $

SEE ALSO

       active(5), convdate(1), ctlinnd(8), getlist(1), inn.conf(5), innd(8), mod-active(8), nnrpd(8).

INN 2.5.2							    2009-09-29							   ACTIVE.TIMES(5)

MOD-ACTIVE(8)						    InterNetNews Documentation						     MOD-ACTIVE(8)

NAME

       mod-active - Batch processing of newsgroups creation and removal commands

SYNOPSIS

       mod-active [ctlinnd-command-file ...]

DESCRIPTION

       mod-active is a Perl script that updates the active file based on its input lines of ctlinnd "newgroup", "rmgroup" and "changegroup"
       commands.  It pauses the server briefly while the existing active file is read and rewritten, which not only keeps innd from updating the
       active file but also locks against other instances of mod-active.

       The script must be run as the news user.

       The input to mod-active can come either from one or more ctlinnd-command-file files named on the command line, or from the standard input.
       Typically its input is the output from the docheckgroups or actsync commands.  Every line which contains the string "ctlinnd newgroup",
       "ctlinnd rmgroup", or "ctlinnd changegroup", optionally preceded by whitespace and/or the path to ctlinnd, is noted for the update.
       Redundant commands, such as a newgroup directive for a group that already exists, are silently ignored.	All other lines in the input are
       also silently ignored.  After the new active file has been generated, the existing one is renamed to active.old and the new one is moved
       into place.  The script then displays the differences between the two files.  Any groups that were added to the active file are also added
       to the active.times file with the string "checkgroups-update".

       Please note that no syntax checking is performed on group names by mod-active.

BUGS

       Though innd is paused while mod-active works, it is not inconceivable that there could be a conflict if something else tries to update the
       active file during the relatively short time that mod-active is working.  The two most realistic ways for this to happen are either by an
       administrator concurrently doing a manual ctlinnd command, or by innd receiving a control message, then mod-active pausing the server, then
       the control message handler script that innd forked running its own ctlinnd command while mod-active is working.  Note that such scenarios
       are very unlikely to happen.

HISTORY

       Written by David C Lawrence <tale@isc.org> for InterNetNews.  Converted to POD by Julien Elie.

SEE ALSO

       active(5), active.times(5), actsync(8), ctlinnd(8), docheckgroups(8), innd(8).

INN 2.5.2							    2009-05-21							     MOD-ACTIVE(8)