NAME

       expireover - Expire entries from the news overview database

SYNOPSIS

       expireover  [  -a  ]  [  -D  overviewdir  ] [ -f file ] [ -n ] [ -O overview.fmt ] [ -s ] [ -v ] [ -z ] [
       file...  ]

DESCRIPTION

       Expireover expires entries from the news overview database.  It reads a list of  pathnames  (relative  to
       the  spool directory, /var/spool/news), from the specified files or standard input if none are specified.
       (A file name of ``-'' may be used to specify the standard input.)  It then removes any mention  of  those
       articles from the appropriate overview database.

OPTIONS

       -z     If  the  ``-z''  flag  is used, then the input is assumed to be sorted such that all entries for a
              newsgroup appear together so that it can be purged at once.  This flag can  be  useful  when  used
              with the sorted output of expire(8)'s ``-z'' flag.

       -s     If the ``-s'' flag is used, then expireover will read the spool directory for all groups mentioned
              in  the  active(5) file, and remove the overview entries of any articles that do not appear in the
              directory.

       -f     To specify an alternate file, use the ``-f'' flag; a name of ``-'' is taken to mean  the  standard
              input.

       -a     The  ``-a''  flag reads the spool directory and adds any missing overview entries.  It will create
              files if necessary.  This can be used to initialize a database, or to sync up a overview  database
              that  may  be  lacking  articles  due  to a crash.  Overchan should be running, to ensure that any
              incoming articles get included.  Using this flag implies the ``-s'' flag; the ``-f'' flag  may  be
              used to add only a subset of the newsgroups.

       -v     To see a list of the entries that would be added or deleted, use the ``-v'' flag.

       -n     To perform no real updates, use the ``-n'' flag.

       -D     The  ``-D''  flag can be used to specify where the databases are stored.  The default directory is
              /var/spool/news/over.view.

       -O     The ``-O'' flag may be used to specify an alternate location for the overview.fmt(5) file; this is
              normally only useful for debugging.

HISTORY

       Written by Rob Robertson <rob@violet.berkeley.edu> and Rich $alz  <rsalz@uunet.uu.net>  (with  help  from
       Dave Lawrence <tale@uunet.uu.net>) for InterNetNews.  This is revision 1.8, dated 1996/10/29.

SEE ALSO

       expire(8), overview.fmt(5).

                                                                                                   EXPIREOVER(8)