bionic (5) expire.ctl.5.gz

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NAME

       expire.ctl - control file for Usenet article expiration

DESCRIPTION

       The  file  /etc/news/expire.ctl  is the default control file for the expire(8) program, which reads it at
       start-up.  Blank lines and lines beginning with a number sign  (``#'')  are  ignored.   All  other  lines
       should be in one of two formats.

       The  first  format  specifies how long to keep a record of fully-expired articles.  This is useful when a
       newsfeed intermittently offers older news that is not kept around very long.  (The case of very old  news
       is  handled  by  the  ``-c'' flag of innd(8).)  There should only be one line in this format, which looks
       like this:
              /remember/:days
       Where days is a floating-point number that specifies the upper limit to remember a  Message-ID,  even  if
       the article has already expired.  (It does not affect article expirations.)

       Most of the lines in the file will consist of five colon-separated fields, as follows:
              pattern:modflag:keep:default:purge
       The  pattern field is a list of wildmat(3)-style patterns, separated by commas.  This field specifies the
       newsgroups to which the line is applied.  Note that the file is interpreted in order, so  that  the  last
       line  that  matches  will  be  used.  This means that general patterns (like a single asterisk to set the
       defaults) should appear before specific group specifications.

       The modflag field can be used to further limit newsgroups to which the line applies, and should be chosen
       from the following set:
              M    Only moderated groups
              U    Only unmoderated groups
              A    All groups

       The  next  three  fields  are used to determine how long an article should be kept.  Each field should be
       either a number of days (fractions like ``8.5'' are allowed) or the word ``never.''  The most common  use
       is  to  specify  the  default value for how long an article should be kept.  The first and third fields —
       keep and purge — specify the boundaries within which an Expires header will be honored.  They are ignored
       if  an  article  has  no  Expires  header.  The fields are specified in the file as ``lower-bound default
       upper-bound,'' and they are explained in this order.  Since most articles do not have explicit expiration
       dates, however, the second field tends to be the most important one.

       The  keep  field specifies how many days an article should be kept before it will be removed.  No article
       in the newsgroup will be removed if it has been  filed  for  less  then  keep  days,  regardless  of  any
       expiration  date.   If  this field is the word ``never'' then an article cannot have been kept for enough
       days so it will never be expired.

       The default field specifies how long to keep an article if no Expires header is present.  If  this  field
       is the word ``never'' then articles without explicit expiration dates will never be expired.

       The  purge  field  specifies the upper bound on how long an article can be kept.  No article will be kept
       longer then the number of days specified by this field.  All articles will be  removed  after  then  have
       been kept for purge days.  If purge is the word ``never'' then the article will never be deleted.

       It is often useful to honor the expiration headers in articles, especially those in moderated groups.  To
       do this, set keep to zero, default to whatever value you wish, and purge to never.  To ignore any Expires
       header, set all three fields to the same value.

       There  must be exactly one line with a pattern of ``*'' and a modflags of ``A'' — this matches all groups
       and is used to set the expiration default.  It should be the first expiration line.

       For example,
              ##  How long to keep expired history
              /remember/:5
              ##  Most things stay for two weeks
              *:A:14:14:14
              ##  Believe expiration dates in moderated groups, up to six weeks
              *:M:1:30:42
              ##  Keep local stuff for a long time
              foo.*:A:30:30:30

HISTORY

       Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews.  This is revision 1.15, dated 1996/10/29.

SEE ALSO

       expire(8), wildmat(3).

                                                                                                   EXPIRE.CTL(5)