ninpaths(8)

NINPATHS(8) InterNetNews Documentation NINPATHS(8)

NAME
ninpaths - Report Usenet Path: statistics (new inpaths)

SYNOPSIS
ninpaths -p -d dumpfile

ninpaths -r site -u dumpfile [-u dumpfile ...] -v level

DESCRIPTION
This is an efficient and space-saving inpaths reporting program. It
works as follows: you feed it the Path: lines via an INN channel feed
or some other similar method, and from time to time the program writes
all its internal counters accumulated so far to a dump file. Another
instance of the program picks up all the dump files, adds them up and
formats them into the report. The purpose of the final report is to
summarize the frequency of occurrence of sites in the Path: headers of
articles.

Some central sites accumulate the Path: data from many news servers
running this program or one like it, and then report statistics on the
most frequently seen news servers in Usenet article Path: lines. The
sendinpaths script can be run daily to mail the accumulated statistics
to such a site and remove the old dump files.

You can get a working setup by doing the following:

1. Create a directory at pathlog/path (replacing pathlog here and in
all steps that follow with the full path to your INN log
directory). Do not change the name of the "path" subdirectory
because it is used by sendinpaths.

2. Set up a channel feed using an entry like:

inpaths!:*:Tc,WP:<pathbin>/ninpaths -p -d <pathlog>/path/inpaths.%d

if your version of INN supports "WP" (2.0 and later all do).
Replace <pathbin> with the full path to your INN binaries
directory, and <pathlog> with the full path to your INN log
directory.

Note that the naming convention of the generated inpaths dump files
should not be changed. sendinpaths explicitly searches files whose
name starts with "inpaths." in the <pathlog>/path directory.

3. Run the following command to start logging these statistics:

ctlinnd reload newsfeeds 'inpaths feed setup'

4. Enter into your news user crontab these two lines:

6 6 * * * <pathbin>/ctlinnd flush inpaths!
10 6 * * * <pathbin>/sendinpaths

(the actual time doesn't matter). This will force ninpaths to
generate a dump file once a day. Then, a few minutes later,
sendinpaths collects the dumps, makes a report, sends the collected
statistics, and deletes the old dumps.

Note that you can manually generate a report without mailing it,
and without deleting processed dump files, with "sendinpaths -n".
Another useful command is "sendinpaths -c" so as to receive a copy
of the e-mail sent by sendinpaths and therefore make sure that
everything is properly set.

5. In a couple of days, check that your daily statistics properly
appear in <http://top1000.anthologeek.net/>.

OPTIONS
-d dumpfile
Save dumps in dumpfile. Any %d in dumpfile will be replaced with
the current system time when the dump is made. This option should
be used with -p.

The format of these dump files is described below.

-p Read Path: lines from standard input.

-r site
Generate a report for site. Generally site should be the value of
pathhost from inn.conf.

-u dumpfile
Read data from dumpfile. This option can be repeated to read data
from multiple dump files.

-v level
Set the verbosity level of the report. Valid values for level are
0, 1, and 2, with 2 being the default.

DUMP FILE FORMAT
The format of the generated dump files is:

!!NINP <version> <start-time> <end-time> <nb-sites> <nb-articles> <average-time>
<site_0> <count_0> <site_1> <count_1> <site_2> <count_2> ...
!!NLREC
:<site_a>!<site_b>,<count_ab>:<site_c>!<site_d>,<count_cd> ...
!!NEND <nb-relations>

where times are UNIX timestamps. Then, nb-sites records follow. Each
record is separated by a space or a new line, and consists of a host
name site_n followed by a number of appearances count_n. The number of
processed Path: header lines is nb-articles.

Afterwards, nb-relations relations follow. In 3.0.x versions, the
relations are separated by a space or a new line, and their syntax is
"site_a!site_b!count_ab" where site_a and site_b are numbers of the
site records starting at 0.

In 3.1.x versions, the relations begin with a colon and are separated
by either nothing or a new line. Their syntax is
":site_a!site_b,count_ab" with the same meaning as in previous
versions. The count can be omitted when it is 1. More than two sites
can be specified in the relation (":site_a!site_b!site_c,count_abc").

For instance:

!!NINP 3.1.1 1302944821 1302944838 5 2 1302944826
newsgate.cistron.nl 1 news.trigofacile.com 2 news.ecp.fr 2 usenet.stanford.edu 1
bleachbot 1
!!NLREC
:3!2:2!1,2:4!0:0!2
!!NLEND 4

where the two processed Path: headers are:

Path: news.trigofacile.com!news.ecp.fr!usenet.stanford.edu!not-for-mail
Path: news.trigofacile.com!news.ecp.fr!newsgate.cistron.nl!bleachbot!not-for-mail

NOTES
If your INN doesn't have the "WP" feed flag (1.5 does not, 1.6 and 1.7
do, 2.0 and later all do), use the following newsfeeds entry:

inpaths!:*:Tc,WH:<pathbin>/ginpaths

where ginpaths is the following script:

#!/bin/sh
exec egrep '^Path: ' | <pathbin>/ninpaths -p -d <pathlog>/path/inpaths.%d

replacing <pathbin> and <pathlog> as above.

HISTORY
This is a slightly modified version of Olaf Titz's original ninpaths
program, which is posted to alt.sources and kept on his WWW archive
under <http://sites.inka.de/~bigred/sw/>.

The idea and some implementation details for ninpaths come from the
original inpaths program, but most of the code has been rewritten for
clarity. This program is in the public domain.

$Id: ninpaths.pod 9383 2011-12-25 20:56:10Z iulius $