initov, domkov, mkov, expov - maintain netnews overview database

b/nov/initov b/nov/domkov b/nov/mkov [ -an ] [ -o stamp ] [ file ... ] b/nov/expov

These programs keep the netnews overview database for newsreaders up to date.

Initov creates the database initially by reading all the articles under a. This takes a long time (on the order of 12 hours, in late 1992), and can be avoided by letting domkov incrementally generate a database for new articles as they arrive; after a week or so, most articles should be in the database. The news system should not be locked when initov is run; initov takes care of the necessary locking internally, and deals with articles that arrive while it is running (primarily by deferring their processing to domkov).

Domkov is run from newsrun(8CN). It updates the database files from the header stream produced by relaynews(8CN) for new articles.

Mkov normally reads a stream of RFC 1036 headers, with those of each article separated from those of its neighbours by an empty line, from files (standard input if none) and writes a summary in the format of newsoverview(5), but with a field containing the article's news spool directory name relative to /usr/spool/news prepended, on standard output. -a reads articles instead of a header stream (but ignores filess which are directories or have names which do not resemble article names, i.e. do not have a leading digit on their last component). and omits the initial directory name field; -n requests the initial directory name despite -a; -o causes only articles older than the file stamp to be summarised.

Expov should be run after expire(8CN) (and is, by doexpire(8CN)) to delete database entries for missing articles.

a/group/.overview

overview database

c/LOCKoverview

lock file for the database

c/headers

stream of headers from newly-arrived articles

c/active

active newsgroups

newsoverview(5), expire(8), relaynews(8)

Written by Geoff Collyer, with minor contributions from Henry Spencer, as part of the C News project.

mkov -o is a blemish, but it really speeds up initov.