1ACTIVE(5) InterNetNews Documentation ACTIVE(5)
2
6 active - List of newsgroups carried by the server
7
9 The file pathdb/active lists the newsgroups carried by INN. This file
10 is generally maintained using ctlinnd(8) to create and remove groups,
11 or by letting controlchan(8) do so on the basis of received control
12 messages. This file should not be edited directly without throttling
13 innd, and must be reloaded using ctlinnd before innd is unthrottled.
14 Editing it directly even with those precautions may make it inconsis‐
15 tent with the overview database and won't update active.times, so
16 ctlinnd should be used to make modifications whenever possible.
17 Each newsgroup should be listed only once. Each line specifies one
19 group. The order of groups does not matter. Within each newsgroup,
20 received articles for that group are assigned monotonically increasing
21 numbers as unique names. If an article is posted to newsgroups not
22 mentioned in this file, those newsgroups are ignored.
23 If none of the newsgroups listed in the Newsgroups header of an article
25 are present in this file, the article is either rejected (if wanttrash
26 is false in inn.conf), or is filed into the newsgroup "junk" and only
27 propagated to sites that receive the "junk" newsgroup (if wanttrash is
28 true).
29 Each line of this file consists of four fields separated by a space:
31 <name> <high> <low> <flag>
33 The first field is the name of the newsgroup. The newsgroup "junk" is
35 special, as mentioned above. The newsgroup "control" and any news‐
36 groups beginning with "control." are also special; control messages are
37 filed into a control.* newsgroup named after the type of control mes‐
38 sage if that group exists, and otherwise are filed into the newsgroup
39 "control" (without regard to what newsgroups are listed in the News‐
40 groups header). If mergetogroups is set to true in inn.conf, news‐
41 groups that begin with "to." are also treated specially; see innd(8).
42 The second field is the highest article number that has been used in
44 that newsgroup. The third field is the lowest article number in the
45 group; this number is not guaranteed to be accurate, and should only be
46 taken to be a hint. It is normally updated nightly as part of the
47 expire process; see news.daily(8) and look for "lowmark" or "renumber"
48 for more details. Note that because of article cancellations, there
49 may be gaps in the numbering sequence. If the lowest article number is
50 greater then the highest article number, then there are no articles in
51 the newsgroup. In order to make it possible to update an entry in-
52 place without rewriting the entire file, the second and third fields
53 are padded out with leading zeros to make them a fixed width.
54 The fourth field contains one of the following flags:
56 y Local postings are allowed.
58 m The group is moderated and all postings must be approved.
59 n No local postings are allowed, only articles from peers.
60 j Articles are filed in the junk group instead.
61 x No local postings and ignored for articles from peers.
62 =foo.bar Articles are filed in the group foo.bar instead.
63 If a newsgroup has the "j" flag, no articles will be filed in that
65 newsgroup, and local postings to that group will be rejected. If an
66 article for that newsgroup is received from a remote site, and it is
67 not crossposted to some other valid group, it will be filed into the
68 "junk" newsgroup instead. This is different than simply not listing
69 the group, since the article will still be accepted and can be propa‐
70 gated to other sites, and the "junk" group can be made available to
71 readers if wished.
72 If the <flag> field begins with an equal sign, the newsgroup is an
74 alias. Articles cannot be posted to that newsgroup, but they can be
75 received from other sites. Any articles received from peers for that
76 newsgroup are treated as if they were actually posted to the group
77 named after the equal sign. Note that the Newsgroups header of the
78 articles are not modified. (Alias groups are typically used during a
79 transition and are typically created manually with ctlinnd(8).) An
80 alias should not point to another alias.
81
83 Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews. Converted
84 to POD by Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>.
85 $Id: active.5 6773 2004-05-17 05:48:54Z rra $
87
89 active.times(5), controlchan(8), ctlinnd(8), inn.conf(5), innd(8),
90 news.daily(8)
91INN 2.4.2 2004-05-16 ACTIVE(5)