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!\
39 :*\
40 :Tc,WP:<pathbin>/ninpaths -p -d <pathlog>/path/inpaths.%d
41 if your version of INN supports "WP" (2.0 and later all do).
43 Replace <pathbin> with the full path to your INN binaries
44 directory, and <pathlog> with the full path to your INN log
45 directory.
46 Note that the naming convention of the generated inpaths dump files
48 should not be changed. sendinpaths explicitly searches files whose
49 name starts with "inpaths." in the <pathlog>/path directory.
50 3. Run the following command to start logging these statistics:
52 ctlinnd reload newsfeeds 'inpaths feed setup'
54 4. Enter into your news user crontab these two lines:
56 6 6 * * * <pathbin>/ctlinnd flush inpaths!
58 10 6 * * * <pathbin>/sendinpaths
59 (the actual time doesn't matter). This will force ninpaths to
61 generate a dump file once a day. Then, a few minutes later,
62 sendinpaths collects the dumps, makes a report, sends the collected
63 statistics, and deletes the old dumps.
64 Note that you can manually generate a report without mailing it,
66 and without deleting processed dump files, with "sendinpaths -n".
67 Another useful command is "sendinpaths -c" so as to receive a copy
68 of the e-mail sent by sendinpaths and therefore make sure that
69 everything is properly set.
70 5. In a couple of days, check that your daily statistics properly
72 appear in <http://top1000.anthologeek.net/>.
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75 -d dumpfile
76 Save dumps in dumpfile. Any %d in dumpfile will be replaced with
77 the current system time when the dump is made. This option should
78 be used with -p.
79 The format of these dump files is described below.
81 -p Read Path header fields from standard input.
83 -r site
85 Generate a report for site. Generally site should be the value of
86 pathhost from inn.conf.
87 -u dumpfile
89 Read data from dumpfile. This option can be repeated to read data
90 from multiple dump files.
91 -v level
93 Set the verbosity level of the report. Valid values for level are
94 0, 1, and 2, with 2 being the default.
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97 The format of the generated dump files is:
98 !!NINP <version> <start-time> <end-time> <nb-sites> <nb-articles>
100 <average-time>
101 <site_0> <count_0> <site_1> <count_1> <site_2> <count_2> ...
102 !!NLREC
103 :<site_a>!<site_b>,<count_ab>:<site_c>!<site_d>,<count_cd> ...
104 !!NEND <nb-relations>
105 where times are UNIX timestamps. Then, nb-sites records follow. Each
107 record is separated by a space or a new line, and consists of a host
108 name site_n followed by a number of appearances count_n. The number of
109 processed Path header fields is nb-articles.
110 Afterwards, nb-relations relations follow. In 3.0.x versions, the
112 relations are separated by a space or a new line, and their syntax is
113 "site_a!site_b!count_ab" where site_a and site_b are numbers of the
114 site records starting at 0.
115 In 3.1.x versions, the relations begin with a colon and are separated
117 by either nothing or a new line. Their syntax is
118 ":site_a!site_b,count_ab" with the same meaning as in previous
119 versions. The count can be omitted when it is 1. More than two sites
120 can be specified in the relation (":site_a!site_b!site_c,count_abc").
121 For instance:
123 !!NINP 3.1.1 1302944821 1302944838 5 2 1302944826
125 newsgate.cistron.nl 1 news.trigofacile.com 2 news.ecp.fr 2
126 usenet.stanford.edu 1
127 bleachbot 1
128 !!NLREC
129 :3!2:2!1,2:4!0:0!2
130 !!NLEND 4
131 where the two processed Path header fields are:
133 Path: news.trigofacile.com!news.ecp.fr!usenet.stanford.edu
135 !not-for-mail
136 Path: news.trigofacile.com!news.ecp.fr!newsgate.cistron.nl
137 !bleachbot!not-for-mail
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140 If your INN doesn't have the "WP" feed flag (1.5 does not, 1.6 and 1.7
141 do, 2.0 and later all do), use the following newsfeeds entry:
142 inpaths!:*:Tc,WH:<pathbin>/ginpaths
144 where ginpaths is the following script:
146 #!/bin/sh
148 exec egrep '^Path: ' \
149 | <pathbin>/ninpaths -p -d <pathlog>/path/inpaths.%d
150 replacing <pathbin> and <pathlog> as above.
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154 This is a slightly modified version of Olaf Titz's original ninpaths
155 program, which is posted to alt.sources and kept on his WWW archive
156 under <http://sites.inka.de/~bigred/sw/>.
157 The idea and some implementation details for ninpaths come from the
159 original inpaths program, but most of the code has been rewritten for
160 clarity. This program is in the public domain.
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163 newsfeeds(5), sendinpaths(8).
164INN 2.7.1 2023-03-07 NINPATHS(8)