Ubuntu Manpage: makehistory - tools to recover Usenet history database.

NAME

       makehistory - tools to recover Usenet history database.

SYNOPSIS

       makehistory [ -A oldtmp ] [ -a active ] [ -b ] [ -f filename ] [ -i ] [ -n ] [ -o ] [ -r ]
       [ -s size ] [ -T tmpdir ] [ -u [ -v ] ]

DESCRIPTION

       Makehistory rebuilds the history(5) text file and the  associated  dbz(3)  database.   The
       default  name  of the text file is /var/lib/news/history; to specify a different name, use
       the ``-f'' flag.  Makehistory scans  the  active(5)  file  to  determine  which  newsgroup
       directories  within  the spool directory, /var/spool/news, should be scanned.  (If a group
       is removed, but its spool directory  still  exists,  makehistory  will  ignore  it.)   The
       program reads each file found and writes a history line for it.

       After the text file is written, makehistory will build the dbz database.

OPTIONS

-A If the ``-A'' flag is used then the argument given is the pathname makehistory can
use to store a copy of the history file as it's being built. It will be appended
to, so existing data will not be lost (and so should be valid history entries).

-a If the ``-a'' flag is given then the argument is the active file to use rather than
the default one of /var/lib/news/active.

-b If the ``-b'' flag is used, then makehistory will remove any articles that do not
have valid Message-ID headers in them.

-f If the ``-f'' flag is used, then the database files are named file.dir and
file.pag. If the ``-f'' flag is not used, then a temporary link to the name
history.n is made and the database files are written as history.n.pag and
history.n.dir.

-o If the ``-o'' flag is used, then the link is not made and any existing history
files are overwritten. If the old database exists, makehistory will use it to
determine the size of the new database.

-i To ignore the old database use the ``-i'' flag. Using the ``-o'' flag implies the
``-i'' flag.

-s The program will also ignore any old database if the ``-s'' flag is used to specify
the approximate number of entries in the new database. Accurately specifying the
size is an optimization that will create a more efficient database. (The size
should be the estimated eventual size of the file, typically the size of the old
file.) For more information, see the discussion of dbzfresh and dbzsize in dbz(3).

-u If the ``-u'' flag is given, then makehistory assumes that innd is running. It
will pause the server while scanning, and then send ``addhist'' commands (see
ctlinnd(8)) to the server for any article that is not found in the dbz database.
The command ``makehistory -bu'' is useful after a system crash, to delete any
mangled articles and bring the article database back into a more consistent state.

-v If the ``-v'' flag is used with the ``-u'' flag, then makehistory will put a copy
of all added lines on its standard output.

-n To scan the spool directory without rebuilding the dbz files, use the ``-n'' flag.
If used with ``-u'', the server will not be paused while scanning.

-r To just build the dbz files from an existing text file, use the ``-r'' flag. The
``-i'' or ``-s'' flags can be useful if there are no valid dbz files to use.

-T Makehistory needs to create a temporary file that contains one line for each
article it finds, which can become very large. This file is created in the
/var/spool/news/in.coming/tmp directory. The ``TMPDIR'' environment variable may
be used to specify a different directory. Alternatively, the ``-T'' flag may be
used to specify a temporary directory. In addition, the sort(1) that is invoked
during the build writes large temporary files (often to /var/tmp but see your
system manpages). If the ``-T'' flag is used, then the flag and its value will be
passed to sort. On most systems this will change the temporary directory that sort
uses. if used, this flag and its value will be passed on to the sort(1) command
that is invoked during the build.

EXAMPLES

       A typical way to use this program is with the following /bin/sh commands:

              ctlinnd throttle "Rebuilding history file"
              cd /var/lib/news
              if makehistory -n -f history.n ; then
                  :
              else
                  echo Error creating history file!
                  exit 1
              fi
              # The following line can be used to retain expired history
              # It is not necessary for the history file to be sorted.
              # awk 'NF==2 { print; }' <history >>history.n
              # View history file for mistakes.
              if makehistory -r -s `wc -l <history` -f history.n; then
                  mv history.n history
                  mv history.n.dir history.dir
                  mv history.n.pag history.pag
              fi
              ctlinnd go ''

BUGS AND LIMITATIONS

       Makehistory  does  not  handle  symbolic  links.   If  the news spool area is split across
       multiple partitions, the following commands should probably be run before the database  is
       regenerated:
              cd /var/spool/news
              find . -type l -name '[1-9]*' -print | xargs -t rm
       Make sure to run the command on all the appropriate partitions!

HISTORY

       Written  by  Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews.  This is revision 1.3, dated
       1996/11/26.