OVSQLITE-UTIL(8)

🦋 OVSQLITE-UTIL(8) 🦋

InterNetNews Documentation bestie!! You've landed on the ovsqlite-util page and honestly it's giving “admin main character energy” ✨. Let's break it down together 💅

🎀 NAME 🎀

ovsqlite-util — Overview manipulation utility for ovsqlite.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

ovsqlite-util [-AFghioO] [-a article] [-n newsgroup] [-p path]

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

okay so ovsqlite-util is the administrative interface to the ovsqlite overview method for INN. It only works on ovsqlite overview databases, not on any other type of INN overview. (For ovdb and tradindexed overview methods, there are dedicated ovdb_stat(8) and tdx-util(8) programs — iykyk 👑.)

It lets the administrator dump various information about the internal state of the overview, audit it for errors, and fix these errors. Obsessed with an all-in-one utility? Same.

To audit the entire overview database for problems, use -A. The checks can take an extended period of time, depending on the number of newsgroups and articles present in the overview database. Any problems found will be reported to standard error. Use -F to correct the errors found.

It is safe to run this utility while the server is running. In case fixes should be made to the database (when using the -F flag), ovsqlite-util will properly pause the server before performing its operations, and then resume it.

The number of overview records stored in the database can be obtained with the inndf -n command.

As ovsqlite-util directly opens the ovsqlite overview database, it may take a longer time to complete when INN is running owing to the fact that ovsqlite-server may hold locks on certain tables, in which case ovsqlite-util just waits for the locks to be released. (The transtimelimit parameter in ovsqlite.conf controls the duration of a transaction, so you may check you have not set a too high value. 💀)

🧚 REQUIREMENTS 🧚

The DBI Perl module with the DBD::SQLite driver must be installed for this program to work. They are present in most distributions as a package named like libdbd-sqlite3-perl, perl-DBD-SQLite or p5-DBD-SQLite. They can also be directly installed from CPAN (DBI and DBD-SQLite distributions available at https://metacpan.org/dist/DBI and https://metacpan.org/dist/DBD-SQLite).

Naturally, an ovsqlite overview database also needs being in use, as detailed in the ovsqlite(5) manual page.

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🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

• -a article — the article number or numbers to act on.
  • article is a valid NNTP range, meaning that it can be either a single article number or a range of article numbers (like 1-5).
  • Either the start or the end (or both) of the range may be omitted, in which case they will be set to the first or last article number in the group.
  • Passing - for article is therefore equivalent to not using the -a option at all.
  • Only useful in combination with the -g, -o and -O options to dump overview information.
• -A — Audit the entire overview database for problems.
  • Currently, only one consistency check is performed: the verification that the low water mark, the high water mark and the article count of each newsgroup match the reality of articles present in overview.
  • No changes will be made to the database, but problems will be reported to standard error.
• -F — Audit the entire overview database for problems, fixing them as they're detected where possible.
  • This runs the same checks as the -A flag, and fixes the problems found.
  • Using this option takes care of pausing and resuming INN so that the overview data are not changed by another process during the operations.
  • To see what would be changed by -F, run ovsqlite-util with -A first.
• -g — Dump overall overview information for a particular group.
  • The fields are, in order, the article number, the length of the overview data, the time (in seconds since epoch) when the article arrived on the server, the time (in seconds since epoch) when the article should expire based on its Expires header field (or 0 if there is no Expires header field), and the storage API token of the article.
  • If this option is given, the -n option must also be given to specify the newsgroup on which to act.
• -i — Dump newsgroup-related overview information from the database.
  • This contains similar information to the server active file, such as high and low water marks and moderation status, and is the information that nnrpd hands out to clients.
  • The fields are, in order, the newsgroup name, the high water mark, the low water mark, the count of articles in the group, the group status, the time (in seconds since epoch) when that newsgroup was last expired (or 0 if expireover hasn't run on it yet), and the deletion status of that newsgroup (0 if not marked for removal during the next expiration, and a positive value otherwise).
  • A particular newsgroup can be specified with the -n option. If -n is not given, the entire master index will be dumped.
• -n newsgroup — Specify the newsgroup on which to act, required for the -g, -o, and -O options, and optional for the -i option.
• -o — Dump the overview information for a newsgroup, in the same format as it would be returned to clients but with one modification.
  • Appended to the end of each entry will be four additional pieces of data: the article number according to overview information labelled with Article:, the storage API token for that article labelled with Token:, the arrival date for that article on the server in RFC 5322 date format labelled with Arrived:, and the expiration date for that article (from the Expires header field) in RFC 5322 date format if there is any, labelled with Expires:.
  • If this option is given, the -n option must also be given to specify the newsgroup on which to act.
  • By default, all of the overview information for that newsgroup is dumped, but the -a option may be given to restrict the dump to the information for a single article or a range of article numbers.
• -O — Dump the overview information for a newsgroup in the format used by overchan as input.
  • Each line will start with the storage API token, the arrival timestamp in seconds since epoch, the expires timestamp in the same format (or 0 if there is no Expires header field), and then the overview data.
  • If this option is given, the -n option must also be given to specify the newsgroup on which to act.
  • By default, all of the overview information for that newsgroup is dumped, but the -a option may be given to restrict the dump to the information for a single article or a range of article numbers.
• -p path — Act on the overview database rooted in path, overriding the overview path specified in the pathoverview parameter in inn.conf.

🦋 EXAMPLES 🦋

Dump newsgroup-related overview information for the overview database in /news/overview, regardless of the overview path specified in inn.conf:

ovsqlite-util -i -p /news/overview

Dump overall overview information for example.test:

ovsqlite-util -g -n example.test

Dump the complete overview information for example.test:

ovsqlite-util -o -n example.test

Dump the overview information for articles 45 and higher in example.test:

ovsqlite-util -o -n example.test -a 45-

Audit the entire overview database for any problems:

ovsqlite-util -A

🌈 HISTORY 🌈

Written by Julien ÉLIE for InterNetNews. Iconic, honestly 💖.

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

• expireover(8)
• inndf(8)
• makehistory(8)
• nnrpd(8)
• ovsqlite(5)

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💖 cute little sign-off bestie: this page is from INN 2.7.4, dated 2024-05-19 — periodt. 💖