MAKEHISTORY(8) InterNetNews Documentation MAKEHISTORY(8)
NAME
makehistory - Initialize or rebuild INN history database
SYNOPSIS
makehistory [-abFIOSx] [-f filename] [-l count] [-L load-average] [-s
size] [-T tmpdir]
DESCRIPTION
makehistory rebuilds the history(5) text file, which contains a list of
message-IDs of articles already seen by the server. It can also be
used to rebuild the overview database. Note that even though the
dbz(3) indices for the history file are also rebuilt by makehistory, it
is useful to run makedbz(8) after makehistory(8) in order to improve
the efficiency of the indices (makehistory does not know how large to
make the hash table at first run, unless the size is given by the -s
flag).
The default location of the history text file is pathdb/history; to
specify an alternate location, use the -f flag.
By default, makehistory will scan the entire spool, using the storage
manager, and write a history line for every article. To also generate
overview information, use the -O flag.
WARNING: If you're trying to rebuild the overview database, be sure to
stop innd(8) and delete or zero out the existing database before you
start for the best results. An overview rebuild should not be done
while the server is running. Unless the existing overview is deleted,
you may end up with problems like out-of-order overview entries,
excessively large overview buffers, and the like.
If ovmethod in inn.conf is "ovdb", you must have the ovdb processes
running while rebuilding overview. ovdb needs them available while
writing overview entries. You can start them by hand separate from the
rest of the server by running ovdb_init; see ovdb_init(8) for more
details.
OPTIONS
-a Append to the history file rather than generating a new one. If
you append to the main history file, make sure innd(8) is throttled
or not running, or you can corrupt the history.
-b Delete any messages found in the spool that do not have valid
Message-ID: headers in them.
-F Fork a separate process to flush overview data to disk rather than
doing it directly. The advantage of this is that it allows
makehistory to continue to collect more data from the spool while
the first batch of data is being written to the overview database.
The disadvantage is that up to twice as much temporary disk space
will be used for the generated overview data. This option only
makes sense in combination with -O. With buffindexed, the overchan
program is invoked to write overview.
-f filename
Rather than writing directly to pathdb/history, instead write to
filename, also in pathdb.
-I Don't store overview data for articles numbered lower than the
lowest article number in active. This is useful if there are for
whatever reason old articles on disk that shouldn't be available to
readers or put into the overview database.
-l count
This option specifies how many articles to process before writing
the accumulated overview information out to the overview database.
The default is 10000. Since overview write performance is faster
with sorted data, each "batch" gets sorted. Increasing the batch
size with this option may further improve write performance, at the
cost of longer sort times. Also, temporary space will be needed to
store the overview batches. At a rough estimate, about 300 * count
bytes of temporary space will be required (not counting temp files
created by sort(1)). See the description of the -T option for how
to specify the temporary storage location. This option has no
effect with buffindexed, because buffindexed does not need sorted
overview and no batching is done.
-L load-average
Temporarily pause activities if the system load average exceeds the
specified level load-average. This allows makehistory to run on a
system being used for other purposes without monopolizing system
resources and thus making the response time for other applications
unacceptably slow. Using nice(1) does not help much for that
because the problem comes from disk I/O usage, and ionice(1) is not
always available or efficient.
-O Create the overview database as well as the history file. Overview
information is only required if the server supports readers; it is
not needed for a transit-only server (see enableoverview in
inn.conf(5)). If you are using the buffindexed overview storage
method, erase all of your overview buffers before running
makehistory with -O.
-S Rather than storing the overview data into the overview database,
just write it to standard output in a form suitable for feeding to
overchan later if wished. When this option is used, -F, -I, -l,
and -T are ignored. This option only makes sense in combination
with -O.
-s size
Size the history database for approximately size pairs. Accurately
specifying the size is an optimization that will create a more
efficient database. (The size should be the estimated eventual
size of the history file, typically the size of the old file, in
lines.)
-T tmpdir
If -O is given, makehistory needs a location to write temporary
overview data. By default, it uses pathtmp, set in inn.conf, but
if this option is given, the provided tmpdir is used instead. This
is also used for temporary files created by sort(1) (which is
invoked in the process of writing overview information since sorted
overview information writes faster). By default, sort usually uses
your system temporary directory; see the sort(1) man page on your
system to be sure.
-x If this option is given, makehistory won't write out history file
entries. This is useful mostly for building overview without
generating a new history file.
EXAMPLES
Here's a typical example of rebuilding the entire history and overview
database, removing broken articles in the news spool. This uses the
default temporary file locations and should be done while innd isn't
running (or is throttled).
makehistory -b -f history.n -O -l 30000 -I
This will rebuild the overview (if using buffindexed, erase the
existing overview buffers before running this command) and leave a new
history file as "history.n" in pathdb. To preserve all of the history
entries from the old history file that correspond to rejected articles
or expired articles, follow the above command with:
cd <pathdb>
awk 'NF == 2 { print }' < history >> history.n
(replacing the path with your pathdb, if it isn't the default). Then
look over the new history file for problems and run:
makedbz -s `wc -l < history.n` -f history.n
Then rename all of the files matching "history.n.*" to "history.*",
replacing the current history database and indices. After that, it's
safe to unthrottle innd.
For a simpler example:
makehistory -b -f history.n -I -O
will scan the spool, removing broken articles and generating history
and overview entries for articles missing from history.
To just rebuild overview:
makehistory -O -x -F
FILES
pathdb/history
This is the default output file for makehistory.
pathtmp
Where temporary files are written unless -T is given.
HISTORY
Originally written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews
and updated by various other people since.
$Id: makehistory.pod 8534 2009-06-23 18:08:14Z iulius $
SEE ALSO
active(5), ctlinnd(8), dbz(3), history(5), inn.conf(5), innd(8),
makedbz(8), ovdb_init(8), overchan(8).
INN 2.6.4 2015-09-20 MAKEHISTORY(8)