Ubuntu Manpage: ninpaths - Report Usenet Path header field statistics (new inpaths)

Provided by: inn2_2.7.2~20230806-1_amd64

NAME

       ninpaths - Report Usenet Path header field statistics (new inpaths)

SYNOPSIS

       ninpaths -p -d dumpfile

       ninpaths -r site -u dumpfile [-u dumpfile ...] -v level

DESCRIPTION

This is an efficient and space-saving inpaths reporting program. It works as follows: you
feed it the Path header fields via an INN channel feed or some other similar method, and
from time to time the program writes all its internal counters accumulated so far to a
dump file. Another instance of the program picks up all the dump files, adds them up and
formats them into the report. The purpose of the final report is to summarize the
frequency of occurrence of sites in the Path header fields of articles.

Some central sites accumulate the Path header field data from many news servers running
this program or one like it, and then report statistics on the most frequently seen news
servers in Usenet article Path header fields. The sendinpaths script can be run daily to
mail the accumulated statistics to such a site and remove the old dump files.

You can get a working setup by doing the following:

1. Create a directory at pathlog/path (replacing pathlog here and in all steps that
follow with the full path to your INN log directory). Do not change the name of the
"path" subdirectory because it is used by sendinpaths.

2. Set up a channel feed using a newsfeeds entry like:

inpaths!\
:*\
:Tc,WP:<pathbin>/ninpaths -p -d <pathlog>/path/inpaths.%d

if your version of INN supports "WP" (2.0 and later all do). Replace <pathbin> with
the full path to your INN binaries directory, and <pathlog> with the full path to your
INN log directory.

Note that the naming convention of the generated inpaths dump files should not be
changed. sendinpaths explicitly searches files whose name starts with "inpaths." in
the <pathlog>/path directory.

3. Run the following command to start logging these statistics:

ctlinnd reload newsfeeds 'inpaths feed setup'

4. Enter into your news user crontab these two lines:

6 6 * * * <pathbin>/ctlinnd flush inpaths!
10 6 * * * <pathbin>/sendinpaths

(the actual time doesn't matter). This will force ninpaths to generate a dump file
once a day. Then, a few minutes later, sendinpaths collects the dumps, makes a
report, sends the collected statistics, and deletes the old dumps.

Note that you can manually generate a report without mailing it, and without deleting
processed dump files, with "sendinpaths -n". Another useful command is "sendinpaths
-c" so as to receive a copy of the e-mail sent by sendinpaths and therefore make sure
that everything is properly set.

5. In a couple of days, check that your daily statistics properly appear in
<http://top1000.anthologeek.net/>.

OPTIONS

       -d dumpfile
           Save dumps in dumpfile.  Any %d in dumpfile will be replaced with the current system
           time when the dump is made.  This option should be used with -p.

           The format of these dump files is described below.

       -p  Read Path header fields from standard input.

       -r site
           Generate a report for site.  Generally site should be the value of pathhost from
           inn.conf.

       -u dumpfile
           Read data from dumpfile.  This option can be repeated to read data from multiple dump
           files.

       -v level
           Set the verbosity level of the report.  Valid values for level are 0, 1, and 2, with 2
           being the default.

DUMP FILE FORMAT

       The format of the generated dump files is:

          !!NINP <version> <start-time> <end-time> <nb-sites> <nb-articles>
              <average-time>
          <site_0> <count_0> <site_1> <count_1> <site_2> <count_2> ...
          !!NLREC
          :<site_a>!<site_b>,<count_ab>:<site_c>!<site_d>,<count_cd> ...
          !!NEND <nb-relations>

       where times are UNIX timestamps.  Then, nb-sites records follow.  Each record is separated
       by a space or a new line, and consists of a host name site_n followed by a number of
       appearances count_n.  The number of processed Path header fields is nb-articles.

       Afterwards, nb-relations relations follow.  In 3.0.x versions, the relations are separated
       by a space or a new line, and their syntax is "site_a!site_b!count_ab" where site_a and
       site_b are numbers of the site records starting at 0.

       In 3.1.x versions, the relations begin with a colon and are separated by either nothing or
       a new line.  Their syntax is ":site_a!site_b,count_ab" with the same meaning as in
       previous versions.  The count can be omitted when it is 1.  More than two sites can be
       specified in the relation (":site_a!site_b!site_c,count_abc").

       For instance:

           !!NINP 3.1.1 1302944821 1302944838 5 2 1302944826
           newsgate.cistron.nl 1 news.trigofacile.com 2 news.ecp.fr 2
               usenet.stanford.edu 1
           bleachbot 1
           !!NLREC
           :3!2:2!1,2:4!0:0!2
           !!NLEND 4

       where the two processed Path header fields are:

           Path: news.trigofacile.com!news.ecp.fr!usenet.stanford.edu
               !not-for-mail
           Path: news.trigofacile.com!news.ecp.fr!newsgate.cistron.nl
               !bleachbot!not-for-mail

NOTES

       If your INN doesn't have the "WP" feed flag (1.5 does not, 1.6 and 1.7 do, 2.0 and later
       all do), use the following newsfeeds entry:

          inpaths!:*:Tc,WH:<pathbin>/ginpaths

       where ginpaths is the following script:

           #!/bin/sh
           exec egrep '^Path: ' \
               | <pathbin>/ninpaths -p -d <pathlog>/path/inpaths.%d

       replacing <pathbin> and <pathlog> as above.

HISTORY

       This is a slightly modified version of Olaf Titz's original ninpaths program, which is
       posted to alt.sources and kept on his WWW archive under
       <http://sites.inka.de/~bigred/sw/>.

       The idea and some implementation details for ninpaths come from the original inpaths
       program, but most of the code has been rewritten for clarity.  This program is in the
       public domain.