makehistory(8) InterNetNews Documentation makehistory(8)NAMEmakehistory - Initialize or rebuild INN history database
SYNOPSISmakehistory [-abeFIOx] [-f filename] [-l count] [-T
tmpdir]
DESCRIPTIONmakehistory rebuilds the history(5) text file, which con
tains a list of message IDs of articles already seen by
the server. It can also be used to rebuild the overview
database. Note that the dbz(3) indexes for the history
file are rebuilt by makedbz(8), not by makehistory as in
earlier versions of INN.
The default name of the history text file is pathdb/his
tory; to specify a different name, 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.
WARNING: If you're trying to rebuild the overview
database, be sure to delete or zero out the existing
database before you start for the best results. Other
wise, you may end up with problems like out-of-order
overview entries, excessively large overview buffers, and
the like.
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 headers in them.
-e Compute Bytes headers which is used for overview data.
This option is valid only if -O flag is specified and
overview.fmt includes `Bytes:'.
-f filename
Rather than writing directly to pathdb/history,
instead write to filename.
-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 disad
vantage 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.
-I Don't store overview data for articles numbered lower
than the lowest article number in active(5). This is
useful if there are old articles on disk for whatever
reason 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 per
formance, 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 `buffind
exed', because `buffindexed' does not need sorted
overview and no batching is done.
-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 tran
sit-only server. If you are using the `buffindexed'
overview storage method, erase all of your overview
buffers before running makehistory with -O.
-T tmpdir
If -O is given, makehistory needs a location to write
temporary overview data. By default, it uses pathtmp,
set in inn.conf(5), 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 /var/tmp; see the man page
for sort 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 loca
tions 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 in history.n in
pathdb. To preserve all of the history entries from the
old history file that correspond to rejected articles or
expired articles, use:
cd /usr/local/news/db
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 prob
lems and run:
makedbz -s `wc -l < history` -f history.n
Then rename all of the files matching `history.n.*' to
`history.*', replacing the current history database and
indexes. 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 generat
ing history and overview entries for articles missing from
history.
To just rebuild overview:
makehistory-O -x -F
FILES
inn.conf
Read for pathdb and pathtmp.
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.
$Id: makehistory.8,v 1.26.2.5 2000/08/09 22:26:55 kondou
Exp $
SEE ALSOdbz(3), active(5), history(5), inn.conf(5), ctlinnd(8),
innd(8), makedbz(8).
2000-08-10 INN 2.3 makehistory(8)
