Expire
scans the
history(5)
text file
<pathdb in inn.conf>/history
and uses the information recorded in it to purge itself or old news articles.
And if the article whose storage method
has self expire functionality, the
control file is ignored except ``/remember/'' line for that article by default.
In this case,
expire
probes the article to see if it still exists.
If it does not exist,
expire
purges the relevant entries.
To disable this, use the ``-N'' flag.
If ``groupbaseexpiry'' in
inn.conf
is true,
expire
always treats all stored articles whose storage method have self expire
functionality regardless of its actual method. In this case ``-e'',
``-k'', ``-N'', ``-p'', ``-q'', ``-w''
and ``-z'' flags are ignored.
Note that
expire
never purges articles which do not match any entry.
OPTIONS
-d
If the ``-d'' flag is used, then the new history file and database is
created in the specified directory,
dir.
This is useful when the filesystem does not have sufficient space to
hold both the old and new history files.
When this flag is used,
expire
leaves the server paused and creates a zero-length file named after the
new history file, with an extension of ``.done'' to indicate that
it has successfully completed the expiration.
The calling script should install the new history file and un-pause the server.
The ``-r'' flag should be used with this flag.
-f
To specify an alternate history file, use the ``-f'' flag.
This flag is valid if ``-d'' flag is used together, and the output will
be written to this file.
The default without ``-f'' flag is ``history.''
-g
If the ``-g'' flag is given, then a one-line summary equivalent to the
output of ``-v 1'' and preceded by the current time, will be appended to
the specified
file.
-h
To specify an alternate input text history file, use the ``-h'' flag.
Expire
uses the old
dbz(3)
database to determine the size of the new one.
If ``-d'' flag is not used together, and the output file name will be
with an extension of ``.n.''
The default without ``-h'' flag is
<pathdb in inn.conf>/history.
-i
To ignore the old database, use the ``-i'' flag.
-N
If the article whose storage method
has self expire functionality, then the control file is ignored for that
article by default.
If the ``-N'' flag is used,
expire
still uses the control file in this case.
-n
If
innd
is not running, use the ``-n'' flag and
expire
will not send the ``pause'' or ``go'' commands.
(For more details on the commands, see
ctlinnd(8)).
Note that
expire
only needs exclusive access for a very short time --- long enough to see
if any new articles arrived since it first hit the end of the file, and to
rename the new files to the working files.
-p
Expire
makes its decisions on the time the article arrived, as found in the
history
file.
This means articles are often kept a little longer than with other
expiration programs that base their decisions on the article's posting
date.
To use the article's posting date, use the ``-p'' flag.
-r
Expire
normally sends a ``pause'' command to the local
innd(8)
daemon when it needs exclusive access to the history file, using
the string ``Expiring'' as the reason.
To give a different reason, use the ``-r'' flag.
The process ID will be appended to the reason.
When
expire
is finished and the new history file is ready, it sends a ``go'' command.
-t
If the ``-t'' flag is used, then
expire
will generate a list of the tokens that should be removed on its
standard output, and the new history file will be left in
history.n,
history.n.dir,
history.n.index
and
history.n.hash.
This flag be useful for debugging when used with the ``-n''
flags. Note that if the ``-f'' flag is used, then the
name specified with that flag will be used instead of
history.
-v
The ``-v'' flag is used to increase the verbosity of the program,
generating messages to standard output.
The
level
should be a number, where higher numbers result in more output.
Level one will print totals of the various actions done (not valid if a
new history file is not written), level two will print report on each
individual file, while level five results in more than one line of output
for every line processed.
-w
Use the ``-w'' flag to ``warp'' time so that
expire
thinks it is running at some time other then the current time.
The value should be a signed floating point number of the number of days
to use as the offset.
-x
If the ``-x'' flag is used, then
expire
will not create any new history files. This is most useful when combined
with the ``-n'' and ``-t'' flags to see how
different expiration policies would change the amount of disk space used.
-z
If the ``-z'' flag is used, then articles are not removed, but their
names are appended to the specified
file.
See the description of
delayrm
in
news.daily(8).
If a filename is specified, it is taken as the control file and parsed
according to the rules in
expire.ctl(5).
A single dash (``-'') may be used to read the file from standard input.
If no file is specified, the file
<pathetc in inn.conf>/expire.ctl
is read.
HISTORY
Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews.
This is revision 1.19.2.1, dated 2000/08/17.
