Provided by: inn2_2.7.2~20230806-1_amd64 
NAME
storage.conf - Configuration file for storage manager
DESCRIPTION
The file pathetc/storage.conf contains the rules to be used in assigning articles to
different storage methods. These rules determine where incoming articles will be stored.
The storage manager is a unified interface between INN and a variety of different storage
methods, allowing the news administrator to choose between different storage methods with
different trade-offs (or even use several at the same time for different newsgroups, or
articles of different sizes). The rest of INN need not care what type of storage method
was used for a given article; the storage manager will figure this out automatically when
that article is retrieved via the storage API. Note that you may also want to see the
options provided in inn.conf(5) regarding article storage.
The storage.conf file consists of a series of storage method entries. Blank lines and
lines beginning with a number sign ("#") are ignored. The maximum number of characters in
each line is 255. The order of entries in this file is important, see below.
Each entry specifies a storage method and a set of rules. Articles which match all of the
rules of a storage method entry will be stored using that storage method; if an article
matches multiple storage method entries, the first one will be used. Each entry is
formatted as follows:
method <methodname> {
class: <storage_class>
newsgroups: <wildmat>
size: <minsize>[,<maxsize>]
expires: <mintime>[,<maxtime>]
options: <options>
exactmatch: <bool>
}
If spaces or tabs are included in a value, that value must be enclosed in double quotes
(""). If either a number sign ("#") or a double quote are meant to be included verbatim
in a value, they should be escaped with "\".
<methodname> is the name of a storage method to use for articles which match the rules of
this entry. The currently available storage methods are:
cnfs
timecaf
timehash
tradspool
trash
See the "STORAGE METHODS" section below for more details.
The meanings of the keys in each storage method entry are as follows:
class: <storage_class>
An identifier for this storage method entry. <storage_class> should be a number
between 0 and 255. It should be unique across all of the entries in this file. It is
mainly used for specifying expiration times by storage class as described in
expire.ctl(5); "timehash" and "timecaf" will also set the top-level directory in which
articles accepted by this storage class are stored. The assignment of a particular
number to a storage class is arbitrary but permanent (since it is used in storage
tokens). Storage classes can be for instance numbered sequentially in storage.conf.
newsgroups: <wildmat>
What newsgroups are stored using this storage method. <wildmat> is a uwildmat pattern
which is matched against the newsgroups an article is posted to. If storeonxref in
inn.conf is true, this pattern will be matched against the newsgroup names in the Xref
header field body; otherwise, it will be matched against the newsgroup names in the
Newsgroups header field body (see inn.conf(5) for discussion of the differences
between these possibilities). Poison wildmat expressions (expressions starting with
"@") are allowed and can be used to exclude certain group patterns: articles
crossposted to poisoned newsgroups will not be stored using this storage method. The
<wildmat> pattern is matched in order.
There is no default newsgroups pattern; if an entry should match all newsgroups, use
an explicit "newsgroups: *".
size: <minsize>[,<maxsize>]
A range of article sizes (in bytes) which should be stored using this storage method.
If <maxsize> is 0 or not given, the upper size of articles is limited only by
maxartsize in inn.conf. The size: field is optional and may be omitted entirely if
you want articles of any size to be stored in this storage method (if, of course,
these articles fulfill all the other requirements of this storage method entry). By
default, <minsize> is set to 0.
expires: <mintime>[,<maxtime>]
A range of article expiration times which should be stored using this storage method.
Be careful; this is less useful than it may appear at first. This is based only on
the Expires header field of the article, not on any local expiration policies or
anything in expire.ctl! If <mintime> is non-zero, then this entry will not match any
article without an Expires header field. This key is therefore only really useful for
assigning articles with requested longer expire times to a separate storage method.
Articles only match if the time until expiration (that is to say, the amount of time
into the future that the Expires header field of the article requests that it remain
around) falls in the interval specified by <mintime> and <maxtime>.
The format of these parameters is "0d0h0m0s" (days, hours, minutes, and seconds into
the future). If <maxtime> is "0s" or is not specified, there is no upper bound on
expire times falling into this entry (note that this key has no effect on when the
article will actually be expired, but only on whether or not the article will be
stored using this storage method). This field is also optional and may be omitted
entirely if you do not want to store articles according to their Expires header field,
if any.
A <mintime> value greater than "0s" implies that this storage method won't match any
article without an Expires header field.
options: <options>
This key is for passing special options to storage methods that require them
(currently only "cnfs"). See the "STORAGE METHODS" section below for a description of
its use.
exactmatch: <bool>
If this key is set to true, all the newsgroups in the Newsgroups header field body of
incoming articles will be examined to see if they match newsgroups patterns.
(Normally, any non-zero number of matching newsgroups is sufficient, provided no
newsgroup matches a poison wildmat as described above.) This is a boolean value;
"true", "yes" and "on" are usable to enable this key. The case of these values is not
significant. The default is false.
If an article matches all of the constraints of an entry, it is stored via that storage
method and is associated with that <storage_class>. This file is scanned in order and the
first matching entry is used to store the article.
If an article does not match any entry, either by being posted to a newsgroup which does
not match any of the <wildmat> patterns or by being outside the size and expires ranges of
all entries whose newsgroups pattern it does match, the article is not stored and is
rejected by innd. When this happens, the error message:
cant store article: no matching entry in storage.conf
is logged to syslog. If you want to silently drop articles matching certain newsgroup
patterns or size or expires ranges, assign them to the "trash" storage method rather than
having them not match any storage method entry.
STORAGE METHODS
Currently, there are five storage methods available. Each method has its pros and cons;
you can choose any mixture of them as is suitable for your environment. Note that each
method has an attribute EXPENSIVESTAT which indicates whether checking the existence of an
article is expensive or not. This is used to run expireover(8).
cnfs
The "cnfs" storage method stores articles in large cyclic buffers (CNFS stands for
Cyclic News File System). Articles are stored in CNFS buffers in arrival order, and
when the buffer fills, it wraps around to the beginning and stores new articles over
the top of the oldest articles in the buffer. The expire time of articles stored in
CNFS buffers is therefore entirely determined by how long it takes the buffer to wrap
around, which depends on how quickly data is being stored in it. (This method is
therefore said to have self-expire functionality. It also means that when an article
is cancelled, the cycbuff doesn't go back and use space until it rolls over and the
whole cycbuff starts being reused.) EXPENSIVESTAT is false for this method.
CNFS has its own configuration file, cycbuff.conf, which describes some subtleties to
the basic description given above. Storage method entries for the "cnfs" storage
method must have an options: field specifying the metacycbuff into which articles
matching that entry should be stored; see cycbuff.conf(5) for details on metacycbuffs.
Advantages: By far the fastest of all storage methods (except for "trash"), since it
eliminates the overhead of dealing with a file system and creating new files. Unlike
all other storage methods, it does not require manual article expiration. With CNFS,
the server will never throttle itself due to a full spool disk, and groups are
restricted to just the buffer files given so that they can never use more than the
amount of disk space allocated to them.
Disadvantages: Article retention times are more difficult to control because old
articles are overwritten automatically. Attacks on Usenet, such as flooding or
massive amounts of spam, can result in wanted articles expiring much faster than
intended (with no warning).
timecaf
This method stores multiple articles in one file, whose name is based on the article's
arrival time and the storage class. The file name will be:
<patharticles>/timecaf-nn/bb/aacc.CF
where "nn" is the hexadecimal value of <storage_class>, "bb" and "aacc" are the
hexadecimal components of the arrival time, and "CF" is a hardcoded extension. (The
arrival time, in seconds since the epoch, is converted to hexadecimal and interpreted
as 0xaabbccdd, with "aa", "bb", and "cc" used to build the path.) This method does
not have self-expire functionality (meaning expire has to run periodically to delete
old articles, as well as cancelled articles if immediatecancel is not set to true in
inn.conf). EXPENSIVESTAT is false for this method.
A given CAF file contains all the articles received during a time frame of 4 minutes
or so (256 seconds), and is limited to 262,144 articles and about 3,5 GB. It is
enough for normal operations. The only caveat is when you're feeding at high speed
bunches of articles between two servers; you'll then want to limit it to that amount
of articles during the time frame when a CAF file stores newly arrived articles.
Advantages: It is roughly four times faster than "timehash" for article writes, since
much of the file system overhead is bypassed, while still retaining the same fine
control over article retention time.
Disadvantages: Using this method means giving up all but the most careful manually
fiddling with the article spool; in this aspect, it looks like "cnfs". As one of the
newer and least widely used storage types, "timecaf" has not been as thoroughly tested
as the other methods.
timehash
This method is very similar to "timecaf" except that each article is stored in a
separate file. The name of the file for a given article will be:
<patharticles>/time-nn/bb/cc/yyyy-aadd
where "nn" is the hexadecimal value of <storage_class>, "yyyy" is a hexadecimal
sequence number, and "bb", "cc", and "aadd" are components of the arrival time in
hexadecimal (the arrival time is interpreted as documented above under "timecaf").
This method does not have self-expire functionality. Cancelled articles are removed
immediately. EXPENSIVESTAT is true for this method.
Advantages: Heavy traffic groups do not cause bottlenecks, and a fine control of
article retention time is still possible.
Disadvantages: The ability to easily find all articles in a given newsgroup and
manually fiddle with the article spool is lost, and INN still suffers from speed
degradation due to file system overhead (creating and deleting individual files is a
slow operation).
tradspool
Traditional spool, or "tradspool", is the traditional news article storage format.
Each article is stored in an individual text file named:
<patharticles>/news/group/name/nnnnn
where "news/group/name" is the name of the newsgroup to which the article was posted
with each period changed to a slash, and "nnnnn" is the sequence number of the article
in that newsgroup. For crossposted articles, the article is linked into each
newsgroup to which it is crossposted (using either hard or symbolic links). This is
the way versions of INN prior to 2.0 stored all articles, as well as being the article
storage format used by C News and earlier news systems. This method does not have
self-expire functionality. Cancelled articles are removed immediately. EXPENSIVESTAT
is true for this method.
Advantages: It is widely used and well-understood; it can read article spools written
by older versions of INN and it is compatible with all third-party INN add-ons. This
storage mechanism provides easy and direct access to the articles stored on the server
and makes writing programs that fiddle with the news spool very easy, and gives fine
control over article retention times.
Disadvantages: It takes a very fast file system and I/O system to keep up with current
Usenet traffic volumes due to file system overhead. Groups with heavy traffic tend to
create a bottleneck because of inefficiencies in storing large numbers of article
files in a single directory. It requires a nightly expire program to delete old
articles out of the news spool, a process that can slow down the server for several
hours or more.
trash
This method silently discards all articles stored in it. Its only real uses are for
testing and for silently discarding articles matching a particular storage method
entry (for whatever reason). Articles stored in this method take up no disk space and
can never be retrieved, so this method has self-expire functionality of a sort.
EXPENSIVESTAT is false for this method.
EXAMPLES
The following sample storage.conf file would store all articles posted to alt.binaries.*
in the "BINARIES" CNFS metacycbuff, all articles over roughly 50 KB in any other hierarchy
in the "LARGE" CNFS metacycbuff, all other articles in alt.* in one timehash class, and
all other articles in any newsgroups in a second timehash class, except for the internal.*
hierarchy which is stored in traditional spool format.
method tradspool {
class: 1
newsgroups: internal.*
}
method cnfs {
class: 2
newsgroups: alt.binaries.*
options: BINARIES
}
method cnfs {
class: 3
newsgroups: *
size: 50000
options: LARGE
}
method timehash {
class: 4
newsgroups: alt.*
}
method timehash {
class: 5
newsgroups: *
}
Notice that the last storage method entry will catch everything. This is a good habit to
get into; make sure that you have at least one catch-all entry just in case something you
did not expect falls through the cracks. Notice also that the special rule for the
internal.* hierarchy is first, so it will catch even articles crossposted to
alt.binaries.* or over 50 KB in size.
As for poison wildmat expressions, if you have for instance an article crossposted between
misc.foo and misc.bar, the pattern:
misc.*,!misc.bar
will match that article whereas the pattern:
misc.*,@misc.bar
will not match that article. An article posted only to misc.bar will fail to match either
pattern.
Usually, high-volume groups and groups whose articles do not need to be kept around very
long (binaries groups, *.jobs*, news.lists.filters, etc.) are stored in CNFS buffers. Use
the other methods (or CNFS buffers again) for everything else. However, it is as often as
not most convenient to keep in "tradspool" special hierarchies like local hierarchies and
hierarchies that should never expire or through the spool of which you need to go
manually.
HISTORY
Written by Katsuhiro Kondou <kondou@nec.co.jp> for InterNetNews. Rewritten into POD by
Julien Elie.
SEE ALSO
cycbuff.conf(5), expire.ctl(5), expireover(8), inn.conf(5), innd(8), libinn_uwildmat(3).