NAME
makeactive - tool to recover Usenet active file.
SYNOPSIS
makeactive [ -m ] [ -o ]
DESCRIPTION
Makeactive invokes find(1) to get a list of all directories in the news
spool tree, /var/spool/news. It discards directories named lost+found
as well as those that have a period in them. It scans all other
directories for all-numeric filenames and determines the highest and
lowest number. The program’s output is a set of active(5) file lines.
Because there is no way to know if a group is moderated or disabled,
the fourth field of all entries will be y. Also, mid-level directories
that aren’t newsgroups will also created as newsgroups with no entries
(for example, there is a ‘‘comp.sources.unix’’ group, but no
‘‘comp.sources’’).
OPTIONS
-m If the ‘‘-m’’ flag is given, then makeactive will attempt to
adjust the highest and lowest article numbers wherever possible.
If articles are found in a newsgroup, the numbers will reflect
what what was found. If no articles are found in a newsgroup,
the high number from the old file will be kept, and the low
number will be set to one more then the high number. This flag
may only be used if the ‘‘-o’’ flag is used.
-o If the ‘‘-o’’ flag is used, makeactive will read an existing
active file for the list of group names and just renumber all
groups. It will preserve the fourth field of the active file if
one is present. This is analogous to the ctlinnd(8)
‘‘renumber’’ command, except that innd(8) should throttled or
not running. Do not use this flag with output redirected to the
standard active file!
EXIT STATUS
Makeactive exits with non-zero status if any problems occurred.
EXAMPLES
A typical way to use the program is with the following /bin/sh
commands:
ctlinnd throttle "Rebuilding active file"
TEMP=${TMPDIR-/var/spool/news/in.coming/tmp}/act$$
if [ -f /var/lib/news/active ] ; then
if makeactive -o >${TEMP} ; then
mv ${TEMP} /var/lib/news/active
fi
else
if makeactive >${TEMP} ; then
# Edit to restore moderated
# and aliased groups.
...
mv ${TEMP} /var/lib/news/active
fi
fi
ctlinnd reload active "New active file"
ctlinnd go ’’
HISTORY
Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews. This is
revision 1.3, dated 1996/10/29.
SEE ALSO
active(5), ctlinnd(8), dbz(3), filechan(8), history(5), innd(8),
newsfeeds(5), makehistory(8), newsrequeue(8).