Newsgroups: news.software.b Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Auto-expiration of news Message-ID: <1988Dec2.184323.7511@utzoo.uucp> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References: <1066@psuhcx.psu.edu> <2694@sultra.UUCP> Date: Fri, 2 Dec 88 18:43:23 GMT In article <2694@sultra.UUCP> dtynan@sultra.UUCP (Der Tynan) writes: >Anyway, the idea is this. In the NEWS/active file, a new field is introduced >in the tradition of the 'm' field for 'moderated'. It is a boolean ('y'/'n'?), >which indicates that the given newsgroup is not read at this site... If all you want to do is to expire such newsgroups quickly, it's trivial to build a control file for C News expire instead. This won't stop the stuff from being filed, but it will get it off the disk quickly. It has the advantage of no incompatible changes to file formats, and use of existing tools rather than inventing yet another wheel. >... a nightly (or weekly) cron program would zip through all the .newsrc >files, to see what groups aren't subscribed to, and update the 'active' file. Note that any scheme which examines .newsrc needs to have some sort of rule about how recent a .newsrc has to be before it is considered. Otherwise a single user, who theoretically reads a lot of news but hasn't been on for six months, fouls the whole thing up. -- SunOSish, adj: requiring | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology 32-bit bug numbers. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu