1NINPATHS(8) InterNetNews Documentation NINPATHS(8)
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6 ninpaths - Report Usenet Path header field statistics (new inpaths)
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9 ninpaths -p -d dumpfile
10 ninpaths -r site -u dumpfile [-u dumpfile ...] -v level
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14 This is an efficient and space-saving inpaths reporting program. It
15 works as follows: you feed it the Path header fields via an INN channel
16 feed or some other similar method, and from time to time the program
17 writes all its internal counters accumulated so far to a dump file.
18 Another instance of the program picks up all the dump files, adds them
19 up and formats them into the report. The purpose of the final report
20 is to summarize the frequency of occurrence of sites in the Path header
21 fields of articles.
22 Some central sites accumulate the Path header field data from many news
24 servers running this program or one like it, and then report statistics
25 on the most frequently seen news servers in Usenet article Path header
26 fields. The sendinpaths script can be run daily to mail the
27 accumulated statistics to such a site and remove the old dump files.
28 You can get a working setup by doing the following:
30 1. Create a directory at pathlog/path (replacing pathlog here and in
32 all steps that follow with the full path to your INN log
33 directory). Do not change the name of the "path" subdirectory
34 because it is used by sendinpaths.
35 2. Set up a channel feed using a newsfeeds entry like:
37 inpaths!:*:Tc,WP:<pathbin>/ninpaths -p -d <pathlog>/path/inpaths.%d
39 if your version of INN supports "WP" (2.0 and later all do).
41 Replace <pathbin> with the full path to your INN binaries
42 directory, and <pathlog> with the full path to your INN log
43 directory.
44 Note that the naming convention of the generated inpaths dump files
46 should not be changed. sendinpaths explicitly searches files whose
47 name starts with "inpaths." in the <pathlog>/path directory.
48 3. Run the following command to start logging these statistics:
50 ctlinnd reload newsfeeds 'inpaths feed setup'
52 4. Enter into your news user crontab these two lines:
54 6 6 * * * <pathbin>/ctlinnd flush inpaths!
56 10 6 * * * <pathbin>/sendinpaths
57 (the actual time doesn't matter). This will force ninpaths to
59 generate a dump file once a day. Then, a few minutes later,
60 sendinpaths collects the dumps, makes a report, sends the collected
61 statistics, and deletes the old dumps.
62 Note that you can manually generate a report without mailing it,
64 and without deleting processed dump files, with "sendinpaths -n".
65 Another useful command is "sendinpaths -c" so as to receive a copy
66 of the e-mail sent by sendinpaths and therefore make sure that
67 everything is properly set.
68 5. In a couple of days, check that your daily statistics properly
70 appear in <http://top1000.anthologeek.net/>.
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73 -d dumpfile
74 Save dumps in dumpfile. Any %d in dumpfile will be replaced with
75 the current system time when the dump is made. This option should
76 be used with -p.
77 The format of these dump files is described below.
79 -p Read Path header fields from standard input.
81 -r site
83 Generate a report for site. Generally site should be the value of
84 pathhost from inn.conf.
85 -u dumpfile
87 Read data from dumpfile. This option can be repeated to read data
88 from multiple dump files.
89 -v level
91 Set the verbosity level of the report. Valid values for level are
92 0, 1, and 2, with 2 being the default.
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95 The format of the generated dump files is:
96 !!NINP <version> <start-time> <end-time> <nb-sites> <nb-articles> <average-time>
98 <site_0> <count_0> <site_1> <count_1> <site_2> <count_2> ...
99 !!NLREC
100 :<site_a>!<site_b>,<count_ab>:<site_c>!<site_d>,<count_cd> ...
101 !!NEND <nb-relations>
102 where times are UNIX timestamps. Then, nb-sites records follow. Each
104 record is separated by a space or a new line, and consists of a host
105 name site_n followed by a number of appearances count_n. The number of
106 processed Path header fields is nb-articles.
107 Afterwards, nb-relations relations follow. In 3.0.x versions, the
109 relations are separated by a space or a new line, and their syntax is
110 "site_a!site_b!count_ab" where site_a and site_b are numbers of the
111 site records starting at 0.
112 In 3.1.x versions, the relations begin with a colon and are separated
114 by either nothing or a new line. Their syntax is
115 ":site_a!site_b,count_ab" with the same meaning as in previous
116 versions. The count can be omitted when it is 1. More than two sites
117 can be specified in the relation (":site_a!site_b!site_c,count_abc").
118 For instance:
120 !!NINP 3.1.1 1302944821 1302944838 5 2 1302944826
122 newsgate.cistron.nl 1 news.trigofacile.com 2 news.ecp.fr 2 usenet.stanford.edu 1
123 bleachbot 1
124 !!NLREC
125 :3!2:2!1,2:4!0:0!2
126 !!NLEND 4
127 where the two processed Path header fields are:
129 Path: news.trigofacile.com!news.ecp.fr!usenet.stanford.edu!not-for-mail
131 Path: news.trigofacile.com!news.ecp.fr!newsgate.cistron.nl!bleachbot!not-for-mail
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134 If your INN doesn't have the "WP" feed flag (1.5 does not, 1.6 and 1.7
135 do, 2.0 and later all do), use the following newsfeeds entry:
136 inpaths!:*:Tc,WH:<pathbin>/ginpaths
138 where ginpaths is the following script:
140 #!/bin/sh
142 exec egrep '^Path: ' | <pathbin>/ninpaths -p -d <pathlog>/path/inpaths.%d
143 replacing <pathbin> and <pathlog> as above.
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147 This is a slightly modified version of Olaf Titz's original ninpaths
148 program, which is posted to alt.sources and kept on his WWW archive
149 under <http://sites.inka.de/~bigred/sw/>.
150 The idea and some implementation details for ninpaths come from the
152 original inpaths program, but most of the code has been rewritten for
153 clarity. This program is in the public domain.
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156 newsfeeds(5), sendinpaths(8).
157INN 2.7.0 2022-07-10 NINPATHS(8)