ACTIVE(5)
NAME
active, active.times - list of active Usenet newsgroups
DESCRIPTION
The file /var/lib/news/active lists the newsgroups that
the local site receives. Each newsgroup should be listed
only once. Each line specifies one group; their order in
the file does not matter. Within each newsgroup, articles
are assigned unique names, which are monotonically
increasing numbers.
If an article is posted to newsgroups not mentioned in
this file, those newsgroups are ignored. If no valid
newsgroups are specified, the article is rejected.
Each line consists of four fields specified by a space:
name himark lomark flags
The first field is the name of the newsgroup. Newsgroups
that start with the three characters ``to.'' are treated
specially; see innd(8). The second field is the highest
article number that has been used in that newsgroup. The
third field is the lowest article number in the group;
this number is not guaranteed to be accurate, and should
only be taken to be a hint. Note that because of article
cancellations, there may be gaps in the numbering
sequence. If the lowest article number is greater then
the highest article number, then there are no articles in
the newsgroup. In order to make it possible to update an
entry in-place without rewriting the entire file, the sec-
ond and third fields are padded out with leading zeros to
make them a fixed width.
The fourth field can contain one of the following flags:
y Local postings are allowed
n No local postings are allowed, only remote ones
m The group is moderated and all postings must be approved
j Articles in this group are not kept, but only passed on
x Articles cannot be posted to this newsgroup
=foo.bar Articles are locally filed into the ``foo.bar'' group
If a newsgroup has the ``j'' flag, then no articles will
be filed into that newsgroup and local postings to that
group should not be generated. If an article for such a
newsgroup is received from a remote site, it will be filed
into the ``junk'' newsgroup if it is not cross-posted.
This is different from not having a newsgroup listed in
the file because sites can subscribe to ``j'' newsgroups
and the article will be propagated to them.
If the fourth field of a newsgroup starts with an equal
sign, then the newsgroup is an alias. Articles can be
posted to the group, but will be treated as if they were
posted to the group named after the equal sign. The sec-
ond and third fields are ignored. Note that the Newsgroup
header is not modified (Alias groups are typically used
during a transition, and are typically created with
ctlinnd(8)). An alias newsgroup should not point to
another alias.
The file /var/lib/news/active.times provides a chronologi-
cal record of when newsgroups are created. This file is
normally updated by innd(8) whenever a ctlinnd ``new-
group'' command is done. Each line consist of three
fields:
name time creator
The first field is the name of the newsgroup. The second
field is the time it was created, expressed as the number
of seconds since the epoch -- i.e., a time_t; see gettime-
ofday(2). The third field is the electronic mail address
of the person who created the group.
HISTORY
Written by Rich $alz lt;rsalz@uunet.uu.net for InterNet-
News. This is revision 1.13, dated 1996/10/29.
SEE ALSO
ctlinnd(8) innd(8).