NEWS.DAILY(8)NEWS.DAILY(8)NAMEnews.daily - do regular Usenet system administration
SYNOPSISnews.daily [ keyword... ]
DESCRIPTION
News.daily performs a number of important Usenet administrative func‐
tions. This includes producing a status report, removing old news
articles, processing log files, rotating the archived log files, renum‐
bering the active file, removing any old socket files found in the
<pathrun in inn.conf> directory, and collecting the output. This pro‐
gram should be run under the news administrator's id, not as root.
By default, news.daily performs all of its functions and mails the out‐
put to the news administrator, <USER specified with --with-news-mas‐
ter at configure>. By specifying ``keywords'' on the command line, it
is possible to modify the functions performed, as well as change the
arguments given to expire(8) and expireover(8).
News.daily should be run once a day, typically out of cron(8). It may
be run more often, but such invocations should at least use the ``noro‐
tate'' keyword (or perhaps the ``notdaily'' keyword) to prevent the log
files from being processed and rotated too fast.
The shlock(1) program is used to prevent simultaneous executions.
KEYWORDS
The following keywords may be used:
delayrm
This uses the ``-z'' flag when invoking expire and expireover.
The names of articles to be removed are written to a temporary
file, and then renamed after expiration by calling expirerm(8).
expctl=path
Specify the file to use as the expire.ctl(5) file for expire.
expdir=path
By default, expire builds the new history(5) file and database
in the same directory as the current files. Using this keyword
specifies a different local to build the new files (by passing
the ``-d'' flag to expire), which will then be moved to the
right location when finished.
nostat This keyword disables the status report generated by innstat
(see innstat(8)). Without this keyword, the status report is
the first function performed, just prior to obtaining the
news.daily lock.
notdaily
By default news.daily expects to be run only once a day, and it
does various things (like rotating logs) that normally should
only be done on daily basis. Use this keyword any extra times
news.daily is run in the day and the normal logfile processing
(and rotation) will not be done.
noexpire
By default, expire is invoked to remove old news articles.
Using this keyword disables this function.
noexpireover
By default, expireover is invoked to remove old overview data‐
base, if enableoverview is set in inn.conf. Using this keyword
disables this function.
noexplog
Expire normally appends information to <pathlog in
inn.conf>/expire.log (see newslog(5)). Using this keyword
causes the expire output to be handled as part of news.daily's
output. It has no effect if the ``noexpire'' keyword is used.
flags='args for expire'
By default, expire is invoked with argument ``-v1''. Using this
keyword changes the arguments to those specified. Be careful to
use quotes if multiple arguments are needed. This keyword has
no effect if the ``noexpire'' keyword is used.
nologs After expiration, scanlogs(8) is invoked to process the log
files. Using this keyword disables all log processing func‐
tions.
norotate
By default, log processing includes rotating and cleaning out
log files. Using this keyword disables the rotating and clean‐
ing aspect of the log processing: the logs files are only
scanned for information and no contents are altered.
This keyword has no effect if the ``nologs'' keyword is used.
The ``norotate'' keyword is passed on to scanlogs if it is
invoked.
norenumber
This keyword disables the ctlinnd(8) renumber operation. Nor‐
mally, the low-water marks for all newsgroups (see active(5))
are reset.
norm By default, any socket ctlinnd socket that has not been modified
for two days will be removed. Using this keyword disables this
function.
nomail News.daily normally sends a mail message containing the results
to the administrator. Using this keyword causes this message to
be sent to stdout and stderr instead. Normally, all utilities
invoked by the script have their stdout and stderr redirected
into a file. If the file is empty, no message is sent.
expireover
The expireover program is called after expiration to purge the
overview databases. If no overview data is created, the
``expireover'' keyword is not needed. This is the case that the
server runs only for feeder(no reader).
expireoverflags='args for expireover'
If the ``expireover'' keyword is used, this keyword may be used
to specify the flags to be passed to expireover. If the
``delayrm'' keyword is used, then the default value is ``-z''
and the list of deleted files; otherwise, the default value is
``-s''.
/full/path
The program specified by the given path is executed just before
any expiration is done. A typical use is to specify an alter‐
nate expiration program and use the ``noexpire'' keyword. Mul‐
tiple programs may be specified; they will be invoked in order.
postexec='post executed program'
The program specified by the given path is executed just after
all expiration is done. Multiple programs may be specified;
they will be invoked in order.
lowmark
If the ``lowmark'' keyword is used, ctlinnd(8) lowmark is used
for renumbering active. Normal ctlinnd(8) renumber operation
will take long time. With ``lowmark'' keyword this will take
less time. If the ``lowmark'' keyword is used, ``norenumber''
keyword is not needed, since news.daily specifies it implicitly.
tmpdir=path
Sets the environment variable TMPDIR to the specified path.
Various parts of the expire process, such as sort, will then use
this path as the directory for temporary files.
HISTORY
News.daily and this manual page written by Landon Curt Noll
<chongo@toad.com> and Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net>. This is revision
6398, dated 2003-07-12.
SEE ALSOactive(5), ctlinnd(8), expire(8), fastrm(8), inn.conf(5), newslog(5),
innwatch.ctl(5), shlock(1).
NEWS.DAILY(8)
