NAME¶
active, active.times - list of active Usenet newsgroups
DESCRIPTION¶
The file
/var/lib/news/active lists the newsgroups that the local site
receives. Each newsgroup should be listed only once. Each line specifies one
group; their order in the file does not matter. Within each newsgroup,
articles are assigned unique names, which are monotonically increasing
numbers.
If an article is posted to newsgroups not mentioned in this file, those
newsgroups are ignored. If no valid newsgroups are specified, the article is
filed into the newsgroup ``junk'' and only propagated to sites that receive
the ``junk'' newsgroup.
Each line consists of four fields specified by a space:
The first field is the name of the newsgroup. The second field is the highest
article number that has been used in that newsgroup. The third field is the
lowest article number in the group; this number is not guaranteed to be
accurate, and should only be taken to be a hint. Note that because of article
cancellations, there may be gaps in the numbering sequence. If the lowest
article number is greater then the highest article number, then there are no
articles in the newsgroup. In order to make it possible to update an entry
in-place without rewriting the entire file, the second and third fields are
padded out with leading zeros to make them a fixed width.
The fourth field can contain one of the following flags:
y Local postings are allowed
n No local postings are allowed, only remote ones
m The group is moderated and all postings must be approved
j Articles in this group are not kept, but only passed on
x Articles cannot be posted to this newsgroup
=foo.bar Articles are locally filed into the ``foo.bar'' group
If a newsgroup has the ``j'' flag, then no articles will be filed into that
newsgroup and local postings to that group should not be generated. If an
article for such a newsgroup is received from a remote site, it will be filed
into the ``junk'' newsgroup if it is not cross-posted. This is different from
not having a newsgroup listed in the file because sites can subscribe to ``j''
newsgroups and the article will be propagated to them.
If the fourth field of a newsgroup starts with an equal sign, then the newsgroup
is an alias. Articles can be posted to the group, but will be treated as if
they were posted to the group named after the equal sign. The second and third
fields are ignored. Note that the Newsgroup header is not modified (Alias
groups are typically used during a transition, and are typically created with
ctlinnd(8)). An alias newsgroup should not point to another alias.
The file
/var/lib/news/active.times provides a chronological record of
when newsgroups are created. This file is normally updated by
innd(8)
whenever a
ctlinnd ``newgroup'' command is done. Each line consist of
three fields:
The first field is the name of the newsgroup. The second field is the time it
was created, expressed as the number of seconds since the epoch —
i.e., a
time_t; see
gettimeofday(2). The third field is
the electronic mail address of the person who created the group.
HISTORY¶
Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews. This is
revision 1.13, dated 1996/10/29.
SEE ALSO¶
ctlinnd(8),
innd(8).