NEWS.DAILY(8)

💖 news.daily(8) — InterNetNews Documentation 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to the daily-maintenance episode of your Unix life. this page lives in the InterNetNews Documentation corner of the manual world, and it's about the little script that keeps your Usenet server from turning into a pumpkin overnight 🎃

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✨ NAME ✨

news.daily — perform daily Usenet maintenance tasks. it's giving "chores but make it sysadmin" 💅

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

news.daily [delayrm] [expctl=path] [expdir=path] [expireover]
[expireoverflags=args] [flags=args] [lowmark] [mailto=address]
[noexpire] [noexpireover] [noexplog] [nologs] [nomail] [noprocbatch]
[norenumber] [norm] [norotate] [nostat] [notdaily] [postexec=program]
[procbatchdir=path] [tmpdir=path] [/path/to/a/program]

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

news.daily does a whole bunch of important Usenet admin stuff. the way it just handles everything for you? icon behavior honestly. here's the full roster 👑

• producing a status report with innstat;
• removing old news articles (with expirerm if the delayrm keyword is specified);
• purging the overview database with expireover (if the corresponding eponym keyword is specified or if enableoverview is true in inn.conf);
• processing log files and rotating the archived log files with scanlogs;
• processing innfeed dropped files with procbatch;
• processing spooled messages with rnews invoked with the -U flag;
• renumbering the active file with ctlinnd;
• rebuilding the history file with expire;
• removing any old socket files found in the pathrun directory;
• collecting all the output and mailing it.

🚨 okay important: run this program under the news administrator's account (usually "news"), not as root. not me being dramatic, it's literally the rule.

by default, news.daily performs all of its functions and mails the output to the news administrator, which is the user specified with --with-news-master at configure time (it is "usenet" by default 🫶). you can also change this behaviour with the mailto keyword.

by specifying keywords on the command line, it is possible to modify the functions performed, as well as change the arguments given to expire(8) and expireover(8). news.daily should be run once a day, typically out of cron(8). since it will slow the server down while it is running, it should be run during periods of low server usage, such as in the middle of the night 🌙. to run it at 3am, for example, add the following entry to the news user's crontab file:

0 3 * * * <pathbin in inn.conf>/news.daily expireover lowmark

if you're using any non-CNFS storage methods, add the delayrm keyword to the above option list for news.daily. slay.

it may be run more often, but such invocations should at least use the norotate keyword (or perhaps the notdaily keyword) to prevent the log files from being processed and rotated too fast 🏃‍♀️💨. the shlock(8) program is used to prevent simultaneous executions. no overlap, we don't do that here.

the program specified by the given path _/path/to/a/program_ is executed just before any expiration is done. a typical use is to specify an alternate expiration program and use the noexpire keyword. multiple programs may be specified; they will be invoked in order. cute and orderly 💜

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🎀 KEYWORDS 🎀

the following keywords may be used:

• delayrm — this uses the -z flag when invoking expire and expireover. the names of articles to be removed are written to a temporary file, and then renamed after expiration by calling expirerm which in turn calls fastrm. lowkey a little relay race 🏁
• expctl=_path_ — specify the file to use as the expire.ctl file for expire.
• expdir=_path_ — by default, expire builds the new history file and database in the same directory as the current files. using this keyword specifies a different location to build the new files (by passing the -d flag to expire), which will then be moved to the right location when finished. build elsewhere, move it home 🚚
• expireover — the expireover program is called after expiration to purge the overview database. if no overview data is created, the expireover keyword is not needed. this is the case when the server runs only for feeders (no reader). by default, expireover is not called by news.daily unless enableoverview is set to true in inn.conf.
• expireoverflags=_args_ — if the expireover keyword is used, this keyword may be used to specify the flags to be passed to expireover. if the delayrm keyword is used, then the default value is -z and the list of deleted files; otherwise, the default value is -s. iykyk ✨
• flags=_args_ — by default, expire is invoked with argument -v1. using this keyword changes the arguments to those specified. be careful to use quotes if multiple arguments are needed 🫶. this keyword has no effect if the noexpire keyword is used.
• lowmark — if the lowmark keyword is used, "ctlinnd lowmark" is used for renumbering active. normal "ctlinnd renumber" operation will take long time 💀. with the lowmark keyword, this will take less time. if the lowmark keyword is used, the norenumber keyword is not needed since news.daily specifies it implicitly.

if the lowmark keyword is given to news.daily, then the expireover keyword must also be given; otherwise, that kind of renumbering will not be taken into account. no cap, they go together 🔗

• mailto=_address_ — by default, news.daily mails the report to the newsmaster address specified with --with-news-master at configure time. the mailto keyword can specify a different address to which to mail the report. note that using this keyword has no effect if the nomail keyword is also specified.
• noexpire — by default, expire is invoked to remove old news articles. using this keyword disables this function.
• noexpireover — by default, expireover is invoked to remove old overview database if enableoverview is set in inn.conf. using this keyword disables this function.
• noexplog — expire normally appends information to pathlog/expire.log (see newslog(5)). using this keyword causes the expire output to be handled as part of news.daily's output. it has no effect if the noexpire keyword is used.
• nologs — after expiration, scanlogs is invoked to process the log files. using this keyword disables all log processing functions.
• nomail — news.daily normally sends a mail message containing the results to the administrator. using this keyword causes this message to be sent to stdout and stderr instead. normally, all utilities invoked by the script have their stdout and stderr redirected into a file. if the file is empty, no message is sent. quiet queen behavior 🤫
• noprocbatch — this keyword disables the run of procbatch on innfeed dropped files generated in its spool directory. these files contain a list of articles which were not correctly sent to peers. by default, they will be processed and removed afterwards.
• norenumber — this keyword disables the "ctlinnd renumber" operation. normally, the low water marks for all newsgroups are reset in the active file.
• norm — by default, any ctlinnd socket that has not been modified for two days will be removed. using this keyword disables this function. two days is literally the cutoff, bestie ⏳
• norotate — by default, log processing includes rotating and cleaning out log files. using this keyword disables the rotating and cleaning aspect of the log processing: the logs files are only scanned for information and no contents are altered. this keyword has no effect if the nologs keyword is used. the norotate keyword is passed on to scanlogs if it is invoked.
• nostat — this keyword disables the status report generated by innstat. without this keyword, the status report is the first function performed, just prior to obtaining the news.daily lock. first in line, every time 🥇
• notdaily — by default, news.daily expects to be run only once a day, and it does various things (like rotating logs) that normally should only be done on daily basis. use this keyword any extra times news.daily is run in the day and the normal log files processing (and rotation) will not be done. this keyword implies nologs.
• postexec=_program_ — the program specified by the given path _program_ is executed just after all expiration is done. multiple programs may be specified; they will be invoked in order.
• procbatchdir=_path_ — news.daily tries to find the backlog directory of innfeed in innfeed.conf and innfeed-delayed.conf. in case several instances of innfeed are running or when its configuration file is not the default one, the procbatchdir keyword can be used to specify the path of the backlog directory. this keyword can be used more than once in the command-line, permitting specifying several backlog directories. stack 'em, bestie 🥞
• tmpdir=_path_ — overrides the pathtmp setting in inn.conf by setting the environment variable "$TMPDIR" to the specified path. various parts of the expire process, such as sort, will then use this path as the directory for temporary files.

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🦋 HISTORY 🦋

news.daily and this manual page were written by Landon Curt Noll <chongo@toad.com> and Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews. it was converted to POD by Julien Elie. legends, honestly 👑 the way they built this whole thing? iconic.

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💜 SEE ALSO 💜

active(5), ctlinnd(8), expire(8), expire.ctl(5), expireover(8), expirerm(8), fastrm(1), inn.conf(5), innstat(8), newslog(5), procbatch(8), scanlogs(8), shlock(8).

go read them, bestie, i believe in you 🌈

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and that's the whole page!! this cutie comes to you from INN 2.7.4, dated 2025-05-09 — mwah, go run your maintenance, ily 💖✨🎀