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.