1MAKEHISTORY(8) InterNetNews Documentation MAKEHISTORY(8)
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6 makehistory - Initialize or rebuild INN history database
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9 makehistory [-abeFIOx] [-f filename] [-l count] [-T tmpdir] [-s size]
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12 makehistory rebuilds the history(5) text file, which contains a list of
13 Message-IDs of articles already seen by the server. It can also be
14 used to rebuild the overview database. Note that the dbz(3) indexes
15 for the history file are rebuilt by makedbz(8), not by makehistory as
16 in earlier versions of INN.
17 The default location of the history text file is pathdb/history; to
19 specify an alternate location, use the -f flag.
20 By default, makehistory will scan the entire spool, using the storage
22 manager, and write a history line for every article. To also generate
23 overview information, use the -O flag.
24 WARNING: If you're trying to rebuild the overview database, be sure to
26 stop innd(8) and delete or zero out the existing database before you
27 start for the best results. An overview rebuild should not be done
28 while the server is running. Unless the existing overview is deleted,
29 you may end up with problems like out-of-order overview entries, exces‐
30 sively large overview buffers, and the like.
31 If ovmethod in inn.conf is "ovdb", you must have the ovdb processes
33 running while rebuilding overview. ovdb needs them available while
34 writing overview entries. You can start them by hand separate from the
35 rest of the server by running ovdb_init; see ovdb_init(8) for more
36 details.
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39 -a Append to the history file rather than generating a new one. If
40 you append to the main history file, make sure innd(8) is throttled
41 or not running, or you can corrupt the history.
42 -b Delete any messages found in the spool that do not have valid Mes‐
44 sage-ID headers in them.
45 -e Compute Bytes headers which is used for overview data. This option
47 is valid only if -O flag is specified and overview.fmt includes
48 "Bytes:".
49 -f filename
51 Rather than writing directly to pathdb/history, instead write to
52 filename.
53 -F Fork a separate process to flush overview data to disk rather than
55 doing it directly. The advantage of this is that it allows make‐
56 history to continue to collect more data from the spool while the
57 first batch of data is being written to the overview database. The
58 disadvantage is that up to twice as much temporary disk space will
59 be used for the generated overview data. This option only makes
60 sense in combination with -O. With "buffindexed", the "overchan"
61 program is invoked to write overview.
62 -I Don't store overview data for articles numbered lower than the low‐
64 est article number in active. This is useful if there are for
65 whatever reason old articles on disk that shouldn't be available to
66 readers or put into the overview database.
67 -l count
69 This option specifies how many articles to process before writing
70 the accumulated overview information out to the overview database.
71 The default is 10000. Since overview write performance is faster
72 with sorted data, each "batch" gets sorted. Increasing the batch
73 size with this option may further improve write performance, at the
74 cost of longer sort times. Also, temporary space will be needed to
75 store the overview batches. At a rough estimate, about 300 * count
76 bytes of temporary space will be required (not counting temp files
77 created by sort(1)). See the description of the -T option for how
78 to specify the temporary storage location. This option has no
79 effect with "buffindexed", because "buffindexed" does not need
80 sorted overview and no batching is done.
81 -s size
83 Size the history database for approximately size pairs. Accurately
84 specifying the size is an optimization that will create a more
85 efficient database. (The size should be the estimated eventual
86 size of the history file, typically the size of the old file, in
87 lines.)
88 -O Create the overview database as well as the history file. Overview
90 information is only required if the server supports readers; it is
91 not needed for a transit-only server (see enableoverview in
92 inn.conf(5)). If you are using the "buffindexed" overview storage
93 method, erase all of your overview buffers before running makehis‐
94 tory with -O.
95 -T tmpdir
97 If -O is given, makehistory needs a location to write temporary
98 overview data. By default, it uses pathtmp, set in inn.conf, but
99 if this option is given, the provided tmpdir is used instead. This
100 is also used for temporary files created by sort(1) (which is
101 invoked in the process of writing overview information since sorted
102 overview information writes faster). By default, sort usually uses
103 your system temporary directory; see the sort(1) man page on your
104 system to be sure.
105 -x If this option is given, makehistory won't write out history file
107 entries. This is useful mostly for building overview without gen‐
108 erating a new history file.
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111 Here's a typical example of rebuilding the entire history and overview
112 database, removing broken articles in the news spool. This uses the
113 default temporary file locations and should be done while innd isn't
114 running (or is throttled).
115 makehistory -b -f history.n -O -l 30000 -I
117 This will rebuild the overview (if using "buffindexed", erase the
119 existing overview buffers before running this command) and leave a new
120 history file as "history.n" in pathdb. To preserve all of the history
121 entries from the old history file that correspond to rejected articles
122 or expired articles, follow the above command with:
123 cd /usr/local/news/db
125 awk 'NF == 2 { print }' < history >> history.n
126 (replacing the path with your pathdb, if it isn't the default). Then
128 look over the new history file for problems and run:
129 makedbz -s `wc -l < history` -f history.n
131 Then rename all of the files matching "history.n.*" to "history.*",
133 replacing the current history database and indexes. After that, it's
134 safe to unthrottle innd.
135 For a simpler example:
137 makehistory -b -f history.n -I -O
139 will scan the spool, removing broken articles and generating history
141 and overview entries for articles missing from history.
142 To just rebuild overview:
144 makehistory -O -x -F
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148 inn.conf
149 Read for pathdb, pathtmp, and other settings.
150 pathdb/history
152 This is the default output file for makehistory.
153 pathtmp
155 Where temporary files are written unless -T is given.
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158 Originally written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews
159 and updated by various other people since.
160 $Id: makehistory.8 6400 2003-07-12 19:26:58Z rra $
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164 dbz(3), active(5), history(5), inn.conf(5), ctlinnd(8), innd(8),
165 makedbz(8), ovdb_init(8), overview.fmt(5).
166INN 2.4.1 2003-07-05 MAKEHISTORY(8)