expire - Usenet article and history expiration program
expire [ -d dir ] [ -e ] [
-f file ] [ -g file ] [ -h file ]
[ -i ] [ -l ] [ -n ] [ -p ] [ -q ] [
-r reason ] [ -s ] [ -t ] [ -v
level ] [ -w number ] [ -x ] [ -z
file ] [ expire.ctl ]
Expire scans the history(5) text file
/var/lib/news/history and uses the information recorded in it to
purge old news articles.
- -d
- If the ``-d'' flag is used, then the new history file and database is
created in the specified directory, dir. This is useful when the
filesystem does not have sufficient space to hold both the old and new
history files. When this flag is used, expire leaves the server
paused and creates a zero-length file named after the new history file,
with an extension of ``.done'' to indicate that it has successfully
completed the expiration. The calling script should install the new
history file and un-pause the server. The ``-r'' flag should be
used with this flag.
- -e
- If the ``-e'' flag is used, then as soon as the first cross posting
of the article expires, all copies of it are removed.
- -f
- To specify an alternate history file, use the ``-f'' flag.
- -g
- If the ``-g'' flag is given, then a one-line summary equivalent to
the output of ``-v1'' and preceeded by the current time, will be
appended to the specified file.
- -h
- To specify an alternate input text history file, use the ``-h''
flag. Expire uses the old dbz(3z) database to determine the
size of the new one.
- -i
- To ignore the old database, use the ``-i'' flag.
- -l
- Expire normally just unlinks each file if it should be expired. If
the ``-l'' flag is used, then all articles after the first one are
treated as if they could be symbolic links to the first one. In this case,
the first article will not be removed as long as any other cross-posts of
the article remain.
- -n
- If innd is not running, use the ``-n'' flag and
expire will not send the ``pause'' or ``go'' commands. (For more
details on the commands, see ctlinnd(8)). Note that expire
only needs exclusive access for a very short time — long enough to
see if any new articles arrived since it first hit the end of the file,
and to rename the new files to the working files.
- -p
- Expire makes its decisions on the time the article arrived, as
found in the history file. This means articles are often kept a
little longer than with other expiration programs that base their
decisions on the article's posting date. To use the article's posting
date, use the ``-p'' flag.
- -q
- Expire normally complains about articles that are posted to
newsgroups not mentioned in the active file. To suppress this action, use
the ``-q'' flag.
- -r
- Expire normally sends a ``pause'' command to the local
innd(8) daemon when it needs exclusive access to the history file,
using the string ``Expiring'' as the reason. To give a different reason,
use the ``-r'' flag. The process ID will be appended to the reason.
When expire is finished and the new history file is ready, it sends
a ``go'' command.
- -s
- If the ``-s'' flag is used, then expire will print a summary
when it exits showing the approximate number of kilobytes used by all
deleted articles.
- -t
- If the ``-t'' flag is used, then expire will generate a list
of the files that should be removed on its standard output, and the new
history file will be left in history.n and history.n.dir and
history.n.pag. This flag be useful for debugging when used with the
``-n'' and ``-s'' flags. Note that if the ``-f'' flag
is used, then the name specified with that flag will be used instead of
history.
- -v
- The ``-v'' flag is used to increase the verbosity of the program,
generating messages to standard output. The level should be a
number, where higher numbers result in more output. Level one will print
totals of the various actions done (not valid if a new history file is not
written), level two will print report on each individual file, while level
five results in more than one line of output for every line
processed.
- -w
- Use the ``-w'' flag to ``warp'' time so that expire thinks
it is running at some time other then the current time. The value should
be a signed floating point number of the number of days to use as the
offset.
- -x
- If the ``-x'' flag is used, then expire will not create any
new history files. This is most useful when combined with the
``-n'', ``-s'', and ``-t'' flags to see how different
expiration policies would change the amount of disk space used.
- -z
- If the ``-z'' flag is used, then articles are not removed, but
their names are appended to the specified file. See the description
of expirerm in news.daily(8).
If a filename is specified, it is taken as the control file and
parsed according to the rules in expire.ctl(5). A single dash (``-'')
may be used to read the file from standard input. If no file is specified,
the file /etc/news/expire.ctl is read.
Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews.
This is revision 1.19, dated 1996/10/29.