NAME

       overchan - Batch update the INN overview database

SYNOPSIS

       overchan [file ...]

DESCRIPTION

       overchan reads overview data from the specified files or from standard input if no files
       are specified, and writes that data into the INN overview database.  (The file "-" means
       to read data from standard input as well.)

       Normally, overview data is stored by innd for articles as they're accepted.  For
       performance, however, it's sometimes useful to have overview data written by a separate
       process.  To do this, set useoverchan to true in inn.conf to tell innd to not write
       overview data directly and then add an overchan channel in newsfeeds:

           overview!:*:Tc,WnteO:<pathbin>/overchan

       where <pathbin> is pathbin in inn.conf.  Additionally, overchan can be used to bulk-load
       overview data from appropriately formatted batch files (such as overflow files from an
       overchan channel).

       Each line of input should have the following format:

           <token> <arrived> <expires> <data>

       where <token> is the storage API token of the article in textual form (surrounded by "@"
       characters), <arrived> is the arrival timestamp of the article in seconds since epoch,
       <expires> is the expiration time of the article in seconds since epoch or 0 if there is
       none, and <data> is the tab-separated overview data.  Each of these fields must be
       separated by a single space.

HISTORY

       Written by Rob Robertson <rob@violet.berkeley.edu> and Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for
       InterNetNews.  Man page rewritten in POD by Russ Allbery <eagle@eyrie.org>.

SEE ALSO

       inn.conf(5), innd(8), newsfeeds(5)