Ubuntu Manpage: makehistory - Initialize or rebuild INN history database

Provided by: inn2_2.7.2~20240212-1build3_amd64

NAME

       makehistory - Initialize or rebuild INN history database

SYNOPSIS

       makehistory [-abFIOSx] [-f filename] [-l count] [-L load-average] [-s size] [-T tmpdir]

DESCRIPTION

       makehistory rebuilds the history(5) text file, which contains a list of message-IDs of
       articles already seen by the server.  It can also be used to rebuild the overview
       database.  Note that even though the dbz indices for the history file are also rebuilt by
       makehistory, it is useful to run makedbz(8) after makehistory(8) in order to improve the
       efficiency of the indices (makehistory does not know how large to make the hash table at
       first run, unless the size is given by the -s flag).

       The default location of the history text file is pathdb/history; to specify an alternate
       location, use the -f flag.

       By default, makehistory will scan the entire spool, using the storage manager, and write a
       history line for every article.  To also generate overview information, use the -O flag.

       If a malformed article is found in the news spool, in a way which prevents its integration
       into the history or overview data, a log line will be output and the malformed article
       will just be skipped.

OVERVIEW REBUILD

WARNING: If you're trying to rebuild the overview database, be sure to stop innd(8) and
delete or zero out the existing database before you start for the best results. An
overview rebuild should not be done while the server is running. Unless the existing
overview is deleted, you may end up with problems like out-of-order overview entries,
excessively large overview buffers, and the like.

If ovmethod in inn.conf is "ovdb", you must have the ovdb processes running while
rebuilding overview. ovdb needs them available while writing overview entries. You can
start them by hand separate from the rest of the server by running ovdb_init; see
ovdb_init(8) for more details.

Similarly, if ovmethod in inn.conf is "ovsqlite", you must have the ovsqlite-server
process running while rebuilding overview. See ovsqlite-server(8) for more details and
how to start it by hand.

Rebuilding overview data is as straight-forward as:

1. Checking that the configuration file of the new overview storage method is present in
pathetc and fits your needs (buffindexed.conf, ovdb.conf or ovsqlite.conf). Note that
the tradindexed overview storage method does not have a dedicated configuration file.

2. Making sure that INN is stopped ("rc.news stop" as the news user, or whichever command
you're using).

3. Setting the new overview storage method in the ovmethod parameter in inn.conf.

4. Making sure that the directory specified by the pathoverview parameter in inn.conf
exists and is empty (or contains freshly created buffindexed buffers, if using that
overview storage method). Otherwise, rename the current directory (to backup existing
overview data) and re-create pathoverview as the news user.

5. Starting ovdb_init or ovsqlite-server as the news user if the new overview storage
method is respectively ovdb or ovsqlite.

6. Running "makehistory -O -x -F" and waiting for the command to finish. (You may notice
a few logs about articles for which overview data cannot be inserted into the new
overview storage method. As long as there aren't tons of them, it is normal, notably
because there is an internal limit in the length of overview data generated by
makehistory, contrary to innd. Unfortunately, these rare articles won't be present in
the new overview.)

7. Stopping ovdb or ovsqlite helper programs if you started them during the previous
steps (running "rc.news stop" as the news user will stop them; do not mind the
messages related to the fact that the news server was not running).

8. Starting INN and checking the logs to make sure everything is fine. You will normally
notice that the active file is renumbered (rc.news takes care of that when run after
an overview rebuild; otherwise, manually run "ctlinnd renumber ''").

OPTIONS

-a Append to the history file rather than generating a new one. If you append to the
main history file, make sure innd(8) is throttled or not running, or you can corrupt
the history.

-b Delete any messages found in the spool that do not have valid Message-ID header fields
in them.

-F Fork a separate process to flush overview data to disk rather than doing it directly.
The advantage of this is that it allows makehistory to continue to collect more data
from the spool while the first batch of data is being written to the overview
database. The disadvantage is that up to twice as much temporary disk space will be
used for the generated overview data. This option only makes sense in combination
with -O. With buffindexed, the overchan program is invoked to write overview.

-f filename
Rather than writing directly to pathdb/history, instead write to filename, also in
pathdb.

-I Don't store overview data for articles numbered lower than the lowest article number
in active. This is useful if there are for whatever reason old articles on disk that
shouldn't be available to readers or put into the overview database.

-l count
This option specifies how many articles to process before writing the accumulated
overview information out to the overview database. The default is "10000". Since
overview write performance is faster with sorted data, each "batch" gets sorted.
Increasing the batch size with this option may further improve write performance, at
the cost of longer sort times. Also, temporary space will be needed to store the
overview batches. At a rough estimate, about 300 * count bytes of temporary space
will be required (not counting temp files created by sort(1)). See the description of
the -T option for how to specify the temporary storage location. This option has no
effect with buffindexed, because buffindexed does not need sorted overview and no
batching is done.

-L load-average
Temporarily pause activities if the system load average exceeds the specified level
load-average. This allows makehistory to run on a system being used for other
purposes without monopolizing system resources and thus making the response time for
other applications unacceptably slow. Using nice(1) does not help much for that
because the problem comes from disk I/O usage, and ionice(1) is not always available
or efficient.

-O Create the overview database as well as the history file. Overview information is
only required if the server supports readers; it is not needed for a transit-only
server (see enableoverview in inn.conf(5)). If you are using the buffindexed overview
storage method, erase all of your overview buffers before running makehistory with -O.

-S Rather than storing the overview data into the overview database, just write it to
standard output in a form suitable for feeding to overchan later if wished. When this
option is used, -F, -I, -l, and -T are ignored. This option only makes sense in
combination with -O.

-s size
Size the history database for approximately size key-value pairs (i.e. lines in
history). Accurately specifying the size is an optimization that will create a more
efficient database. (The size should be the estimated eventual number of articles,
typically the size of the old history file, in lines.)

By default, makehistory will create a database optimized for handling about 6,000,000
articles (or 500,000 if the slower tagged hash format is used). This size does not
limit the number of articles the news server can store in its history file. It will
just get slower when that optimal size is exceeded, until the next run of news.daily
which will appropriately resize it.

-T tmpdir
If -O is given, makehistory needs a location to write temporary overview data. By
default, it uses pathtmp, set in inn.conf, but if this option is given, the provided
tmpdir is used instead. This is also used for temporary files created by sort(1)
(which is invoked in the process of writing overview information since sorted overview
information writes faster). By default, sort usually uses your system temporary
directory; see the sort(1) man page on your system to be sure.

-x If this option is given, makehistory won't write out history file entries. This is
useful mostly for building overview without generating a new history file.

EXAMPLES

       Here's a typical example of rebuilding the entire history and overview database, removing
       broken articles in the news spool.  This uses the default temporary file locations and
       should be done while innd isn't running (or is throttled).

           makehistory -b -f history.n -O -l 30000 -I

       This will rebuild the overview (if using buffindexed, erase the existing overview buffers
       before running this command) and leave a new history file as "history.n" in pathdb.  To
       preserve all of the history entries from the old history file that correspond to rejected
       articles or expired articles, follow the above command with:

           cd <pathdb>
           awk 'NF == 2 { print }' < history >> history.n

       (replacing the path with your pathdb, if it isn't the default).  Then look over the new
       history file for problems and run:

           makedbz -s `wc -l < history.n` -f history.n

       Then rename all of the files matching "history.n.*" to "history.*", replacing the current
       history database and indices.  After that, it's safe to unthrottle innd.

       For a simpler example:

           makehistory -b -f history.n -I -O

       will scan the spool, removing broken articles and generating history and overview entries
       for articles missing from history.

       To pre-size the history file for 100,000,000 articles, and generate overview data at the
       same time, you may directly use the following command:

           makehistory -O -s 100000000

       You then do not need running makedbz as the history file has already been generated and
       optimized for the expected number of articles.

       To just rebuild overview:

           makehistory -O -x -F

FILES

       pathdb/history
           This is the default output file for makehistory.

       pathtmp
           Where temporary files are written unless -T is given.

HISTORY

       Originally written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews and updated by
       various other people since.