ACTIVE(5) ACTIVE(5)
NAME
active, active.times - list of active Usenet newsgroups
DESCRIPTION
The file /var/lib/news/active lists the newsgroups that the local site
receives. Each newsgroup should be listed only once. Each line speci-
fies one group; their order in the file does not matter. Within each
newsgroup, articles are assigned unique names, which are monotonically
increasing numbers.
If an article is posted to newsgroups not mentioned in this file, those
newsgroups are ignored. If no valid newsgroups are specified, the
article is filed into the newsgroup ``junk'' and only propagated to
sites that receive the ``junk'' newsgroup.
Each line consists of four fields specified by a space:
name himark lomark flags
The first field is the name of the newsgroup. The second field is the
highest article number that has been used in that newsgroup. The third
field is the lowest article number in the group; this number is not
guaranteed to be accurate, and should only be taken to be a hint. Note
that because of article cancellations, there may be gaps in the number-
ing sequence. If the lowest article number is greater then the highest
article number, then there are no articles in the newsgroup. In order
to make it possible to update an entry in-place without rewriting the
entire file, the second and third fields are padded out with leading
zeros to make them a fixed width.
The fourth field can contain one of the following flags:
y Local postings are allowed
n No local postings are allowed, only remote ones
m The group is moderated and all postings must be approved
j Articles in this group are not kept, but only passed on
x Articles cannot be posted to this newsgroup
=foo.bar Articles are locally filed into the ``foo.bar'' group
If a newsgroup has the ``j'' flag, then no articles will be filed into
that newsgroup and local postings to that group should not be gener-
ated. If an article for such a newsgroup is received from a remote
site, it will be filed into the ``junk'' newsgroup if it is not cross-
posted. This is different from not having a newsgroup listed in the
file because sites can subscribe to ``j'' newsgroups and the article
will be propagated to them.
If the fourth field of a newsgroup starts with an equal sign, then the
newsgroup is an alias. Articles can be posted to the group, but will
be treated as if they were posted to the group named after the equal
sign. The second and third fields are ignored. Note that the News-
group header is not modified (Alias groups are typically used during a
transition, and are typically created with ctlinnd(8)). An alias news-
group should not point to another alias.
The file /var/lib/news/active.times provides a chronological record of
when newsgroups are created. This file is normally updated by innd(8)
whenever a ctlinnd ``newgroup'' command is done. Each line consist of
three fields:
name time creator
The first field is the name of the newsgroup. The second field is the
time it was created, expressed as the number of seconds since the epoch
-- i.e., a time_t; see gettimeofday(2). The third field is the elec-
tronic mail address of the person who created the group.
HISTORY
Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews. This is
revision 1.13, dated 1996/10/29.
SEE ALSO
ctlinnd(8), innd(8).
ACTIVE(5)
