docheckgroups - Process checkgroups and output a list of changes
docheckgroups [
-u] [
include-pattern
[
exclude-pattern]]
docheckgroups is usually run by
controlchan in order to process
checkgroups control messages. It reads a list of newsgroups along with their
descriptions on its standard input. That list should be formatted like the
newsgroups(5) file: each line contains the name of a newsgroup followed
by one or more tabulations and its description.
docheckgroups will only check the presence of newsgroups which match
include-pattern (an
egrep expression like "^comp\..*$"
for newsgroups starting with "comp.") and which do not match
exclude-pattern (also an
egrep expression) except for newsgroups
mentioned in the
pathetc/localgroups file. This file is also formatted
like the
newsgroups(5) file and should contain local newsgroups which
would otherwise be mentioned for removal. There is no need to put local
newsgroups of hierarchies for which no checkgroups control messages are sent,
unless you manually process checkgroups texts for them. Lines beginning with a
hash sign ("#") are not taken into account in this file. All the
newsgroups and descriptions mentioned in
pathetc/localgroups are
appended to the processed checkgroups.
If
exclude-pattern is given,
include-pattern should also be given
before (you can use an empty string ("") if you want to include all
the newsgroups). Be that as it may,
docheckgroups will only check
newsgroups in the top-level hierarchies which are present in the checkgroups.
Then,
docheckgroups checks the
active and
newsgroups files
and displays on its standard output a list of changes, if any. It does not
change anything by default; it only points out what should be changed:
- •
- Newsgroups which should be removed (they are in the
active file but not in the checkgroups) and the relevant
ctlinnd commands to achieve that;
- •
- Newsgroups which should be added (they are not in the
active file but in the checkgroups) and the relevant ctlinnd
commands to achieve that;
- •
- Newsgroups which are incorrectly marked as moderated or
unmoderated (they are both in the active file and the checkgroups
but their status differs) and the relevant ctlinnd commands to fix
that;
- •
- Descriptions which should be removed (they are in the
newsgroups file but not in the checkgroups);
- •
- Descriptions which should be added (they are not in the
newsgroups file but in the checkgroups).
The output of
docheckgroups can be fed into
mod-active (it will
pause the news server, update the
active file accordingly, reload it
and resume the work of the news server) or into the shell (commands for
ctlinnd will be processed one by one). In order to update the
newsgroups file, the
-u flag must be given to
docheckgroups.
When processing a checkgroups manually, it is always advisable to first check
the raw output of
docheckgroups. Then, if everything looks fine, use
mod-active and the
-u flag.
- -u
- If this flag is given, docheckgroups will update the
newsgroups file: it removes obsolete descriptions and adds new
ones. It also sorts this file alphabetically and improves its general
format (see newsgroups(5) for an explanation of the preferred
number of tabulations).
So as to better understand how
docheckgroups works, here are examples
with the following
active file:
a.first 0000000000 0000000001 y
a.second.announce 0000000000 0000000001 y
a.second.group 0000000000 0000000001 y
b.additional 0000000000 0000000001 y
b.third 0000000000 0000000001 y
c.fourth 0000000000 0000000001 y
the following
newsgroups file (using tabulations):
a.first First group.
a.second.announce Announce group.
a.second.group Second group.
b.third Third group.
c.fourth Fourth group.
and the following
localgroups file (using tabulations):
b.additional A local newsgroup I want to keep.
The checkgroups we process is in the file
test which contains:
a.first First group.
a.second.announce Announce group. (Moderated)
a.second.group Second group.
b.third Third group.
c.fourth Fourth group.
If we run:
cat test | docheckgroups
docheckgroups will output that a.second.announce is incorrectly marked as
unmoderated and that its description is obsolete. Besides, two new
descriptions will be mentioned for addition (the new one for a.second.announce
and the missing description for b.additional -- it should indeed be in
the
newsgroups file and not only in
localgroups). Now that we
have checked the output of
docheckgroups and that we agree with the
changes, we run it with the
-u flag to update the
newsgroups
file and we redirect the standard output to
mod-active to update the
active file:
cat test | docheckgroups -u | mod-active
That's all!
Now, suppose we run:
cat test | docheckgroups "^c\..*$"
Nothing is output (indeed, everything is fine for the c.* hierarchy). It would
have been similar if the
test file had only contained the checkgroups
for the c.* hierarchy (
docheckgroups would not have checked a.* and
b.*, even if they had been in
include-pattern).
In order to check both a.* and c.*, you can run:
cat test | docheckgroups "^a\..*$|^c\..*$"
And if you want to check a.* but not a.second.*, you can run:
cat test | docheckgroups "^a\..*$" "^a\.second\..*$"
In our example,
docheckgroups will then mention a.second.announce and
a.second.group for removal since they are in the
active file (the same
goes for their descriptions). Notwithstanding, if you do want to keep
a.second.announce, just add this group to
localgroups and
docheckgroups will no longer mention it for removal.
-
pathbin/docheckgroups
- The Shell script itself used to process checkgroups.
-
pathetc/localgroups
- The list of local newsgroups along with their
descriptions.
Documentation written by Julien Elie for InterNetNews.
active(5),
controlchan(8),
ctlinnd(8),
mod-active(8),
newsgroups(5).