NAME
expire - Usenet article and history expiration program
SYNOPSIS
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
]
DESCRIPTION
Expire scans the history(5) text file /news/etc/history and
uses the information recorded in it to purge old news arti-
cles.
OPTIONS
-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 com-
pleted 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 rea-
son. 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 stan-
dard 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 com-
bined 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 sin-
gle dash (``-'') may be used to read the file from standard
input. If no file is specified, the file
/usr/local/news/etc/expire.ctl is read.
HISTORY
Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews.
This is revision 1.19, dated 1996/10/29.
SEE ALSO
ctlinnd(8), dbz(3z), expire.ctl(5), history(5), innd(8),
inndcomm(3).
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