Man Linux: Main Page and Category List

NAME

       snprimedb - feed the sn database.

SYNOPSIS

       snprimedb [-i] (no arguments)

DESCRIPTION

       snprimedb  reads  records  from its standard input and enters them into
       the database.  The database is appended to; if you want to start a  new
       database,      you      would     delete     the     database     files
       .chain, .table, .newsgroup before running this program.

       The main purpose of snprimedb is to rebuild the ID database.  Then  its
       input is usually obtained from snscan.

       If the option -i is given, simply initialize the database files if they
       do not exist, and exit.

       Input lines are of the format
       newsgroup id serial where newsgroup is the newsgroup the article may be
       found  in,  id is its message id, and serial is the local serial number
       of that article in that newsgroup.  If newsgroup is  the  special  name
       =junk, then the whole line is ignored.

       You will need to be root or the owner of /var/spool/sn to do this.

BUGS

       snprimedb  does  not check to see that the articles really exist.  Also
       the size of the hash table is fixed at compile time.

       Under degenerate conditions, the hash table  file  .chain  (see  below)
       could  grow very large, with reclaimed space remaining unused.  This is
       due to the very simple file space allocator, which doesn’t know how  to
       coalesce  adjacent  free  areas.   It  doesn’t  know  how to split them
       either.  The allocator assumes that the shape of  the  distribution  of
       record lengths remains quite constant over time.

       The  hash  table  database  doesn’t  make  any  attempt  to  reduce its
       footprint.  This should be acceptable, since the database is shared.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

       SNROOT If this is set and is not empty, the value is used in  place  of
              /var/spool/sn, the default news spool directory.

FILES

       /var/spool/sn/.table
              snprimedb uses this file as the index of the hash table, and ...

       /var/spool/sn/.chain
              as the hash chains, and ...

       /var/spool/sn/.newsgroup
              to attach an integer identifier to each  newsgroup  name.   This
              file is a human-readable flat text file.