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NEWSHOUND(8) DragonFly System Manager's Manual NEWSHOUND(8)
NAME newshound
- News collecting system used with nntpcached.
SYNOPSIS
newshound [-?cbfhSA] [-d level] [-u [l]ow,[m]iddle,[h]igh] [-n
newsgroup] [-l lowmark] [-g number] [-s news.server.com] [-p
portnumber]
DESCRIPTION
Newshound is a nntpcached utility which collects and creates a sorted
list of newsgroups that have been accessed by the sites user base.
This list is then used to retrive all the article within the popular
newsgroups and store them using nntpcached. Switches override settings
in the newshound.conf file.
OPTIONS
Newhound understands the following command line switches:
-? Outputs a verbose usage listing.
-c Collect, sort and create newshound's hound list. This is a file
that contains all the newsgroups your user base reads. Starting
from most popular newsgroups and ending with low level or one
off newsgroup accessing. The -l option can be used to strip
these low level newsgroups out. The -b option will ban
particular newgroups.
-b Turn on the ban for those newsgroups that use a large amount of
bandwidth. Such as the binaries and pictures newsgroups.
-f Fetch all the newsgroup articles from the hound list. This type
of job should be crond to run during low network usage. Like in
the middle of the night. You can limit the number of newsgroups
collected by using the -g option.
-h Fetch only the newsgroup headers. This argument is used with the
-f option. Programs like pine collects the header information
from newsgroups first, instead of the articles.
-S Display some setting details for newshound.
-A Automatic Mode. This setting will fetch articles after a break
of every NN minutes. The value of NN is compiled into the
program and is set at around 60 minutes (default). This mode
runs newshound forever.
-d [level]
Set debug level. Between 1 to 4. 1 being light and 4 being
heavy.
-u [l]ow,[m]iddle,[h]igh
Update all the newsgroups article index in the hound list file.
This can help reduce the number of articles checked or
collected. As well has fill in any missing articles from a
newsgroup. A single newsgroup can have its index set by using
the -n option.
-n newsgroup
Set the newsgroup article index pointer to the value set by the
-u option. This is useful if you want to skip a large number of
old articles.
-l lowmark
This option will only sort the newsgroups that have had the
number of articles cached greater then or equal to lowmark.
-g number
Get the specified number of newsgroups from the hound list. The
default is all newsgroups in hound list.
-s news.server.com
Select another news server to collect articles from. The default
is localhost.
-p portnumber
Select another news port to collect articles from. The default
is 119.
EXAMPLES
This is a list of helpful examples
newshound -c -l 100 -b
Create a hound list of newsgroups that have had more then 100
articles cached and ban (remove) the large bandwidth newsgroups.
newshound -A &
Run in Automatic Mode and collect news after a break of NN
minutes.
newshound -d 3 -g 10 -f
Fetch the top 10 newsgroups from hound list, set debug level to
3 so we can see what file checking and cacheing is being done.
newshound -f -h
Fetch all newsgroup headers only. This reduces download
bandwidth while showing the user what articles are avaliable. If
your like me, you skip thru 80% of all the articles in a
newsgroup. This option is effective on low volume newsgroups.
newshound -u l
Update the hound list's article index pointer to low so that
when we do a fetch, everything we haven't got is then cached.
newshound -u h -n alt.comp.newsgroup
Set the alt.comp.newsgroup article index pointer to high. This
will stop newshound collecting old articles.
FILES
cache.history nntpcached history file
hound.list sorted list of newsgroups
newshound.conf newshound configuration file.
AUTHORS
Andre Dedio (andre@weblink.solutions.net.au)
Vic Metcalfe (vic@brutus.tlug.org) - tcp socket routines.
BUGS
If you use the -s option on a remote server, the cache file checking
routine and the creation of a hound list can fail. This can be solved
by using NFS and mounting the remote newscache directory locally. You
will have to compile newshound to reflect this.
Newshound influences the cache.history file to bias large volume
newsgroups. You should either run newshound using an old cache.history
file or run it several weeks after installing nntpcached.
The -h option updates the newsgroup article index pointers. If a normal
fetch is started then all articles appear to be cached. To reset the
index pointers just uses the -u option before the new fetch is started.
But this really defeats the purpose of collecting the headers. If you
really need to collect articles and headers then do it this way.
newshound -f ; newshound -u l ; newshound -f -h
This will created the header files from the existing articles.
Send bugs to andre@weblink.solutions.net.au
SEE ALSO
pine(1),nntpcached(8),nfsd(8),mountd(8)
UNIX Manual NEWSHOUND(8)