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

Provided by: inn2_2.7.2~20240212-1build3_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.