DOCHECKGROUPS(8)

💅 DOCHECKGROUPS(8) — like, the checkgroups whisperer

okay bestie, welcome to docheckgroups, one of the InterNetNews girlies ✨ This is the manual page for it, and I'm gonna walk you through every single thing it does, no skips, no cap.

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

docheckgroups [-u] [include-pattern [exclude-pattern]]

that's the whole vibe check right there. two optional positional args, one flag. slay.

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so docheckgroups is usually run by controlchan because it's the one who processes checkgroups control messages. main character energy honestly.

what it does: it reads a list of newsgroups (plus their descriptions) on its standard input. that list needs to be formatted like the newsgroups(5) file — meaning each line is the newsgroup name, then one or more tabulations, then the description. periodt.

now here's where the filtering comes in: docheckgroups will only check the presence of newsgroups that match include-pattern (that's 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. 🫶

that pathetc/localgroups file? also formatted like the newsgroups(5) file, and it should contain local newsgroups which would otherwise be mentioned for removal. there's no need to put local newsgroups of hierarchies for which no checkgroups control messages are sent, unless you manually process checkgroups texts for them. and heads up: 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. cute, right?

if exclude-pattern is given, include-pattern should also be given before it (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. iykyk.

then — and this is the fun part — 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). and listen — in order to update the newsgroups file, the -u flag must be given to docheckgroups. don't forget it, bestie. 🙈

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. like, look before you leap, fr fr.

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -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). the glow-up option 💅

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🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

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). 😭 so much tea.

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. 🫶

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🧚 FILES 🧚

• pathbin/docheckgroups — The Shell script itself used to process checkgroups.
• pathetc/localgroups — The list of local newsgroups along with their descriptions.

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💜 HISTORY 💜

Documentation written by Julien Elie for InterNetNews. 👑

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

active(5), controlchan(8), ctlinnd(8), mod-active(8), newsgroups(5).

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and that's the whole page, bestie 💖 this was INN 2.7.4, dated 2022-07-10 — go forth and check those groups, you absolute icon 🦋⭐