+.if n .ds La '
+.if n .ds Ra '
+.if t .ds La `
+.if t .ds Ra '
+.if n .ds Lq "
+.if n .ds Rq "
+.if t .ds Lq ``
+.if t .ds Rq ''
+.de Ch
+\\$3\\*(Lq\\$1\\*(Rq\\$2
+..
+.TH EXPIRE 8 "February 14, 1986"
+.ds ]W Version B 2.10.3
+.SH NAME
+expire \- remove outdated news articles
+.SH SYNOPSIS
+.BR /usr/lib/news/expire " [ " \-n
+.IR newsgroups " ] ["
+.BR \-i " ] [ " \-I " ] ["
+.BR \-a " ] ["
+.BI \-v " level"
+] [
+.B \-p
+]
+.br
+ [
+.B \-h
+] [
+.B \-r
+] [
+.BI \-e " days"
+] [
+.BI \-E " days"
+]
+.br
+.B /usr/lib/news/expire
+.BI \-f " user@site.DOMAIN"
+.br
+.B /usr/lib/news/expire
+.B \-u
+.SH DESCRIPTION
+.PP
+.I Expire
+is the program that removes out-of-date news articles from your system.
+You need to use a special program to do this, instead of just using
+.I find(1)
+or
+.I rm(1),
+because of the history file. If you just delete messages, then the history
+file will become incorrect because it will think that they are still there.
+.PP
+The normal use of
+.I expire
+is to run it at regular intervals with no options.
+It will remove all articles whose expiration date has passed.
+If you have a lot of disk space, you can run it once a week. If disk space is
+tight, you might want to run it every night. The length of time that it takes
+to run depends, of course, on many factors; on a VAX 750 with a 15-day
+expiration period and the volume of news that is typical in 1986 (about 5000
+articles per week),
+.I expire
+will take roughly an hour to run.
+.PP
+.I Expire
+has the following options:
+.TP
+.B \-n
+Specify certain newsgroups whose articles will be expired. The other
+newsgroups will be left alone. The notation that you use with the \-n option
+is quite similar to that used in the sys file. To expire only the articles in
+net.origins, leaving everything else alone, type this:
+.nf
+ /usr/lib/news/expire \-n net.origins
+.fi
+To expire only the articles in net.micro, but leave net.micro.pc and
+net.micro.mac alone, type this:
+.nf
+ /usr/lib/news/expire \-n net.micro !net.micro.mac !net.micro.pc
+.fi
+For compatibility with the syntax of the sys file, you can also type the
+command this way, with commas instead of spaces between the fields.
+.nf
+ /usr/lib/news/expire \-n net.micro,!net.micro.mac,!net.micro.pc
+.fi
+If you have certain groups that you use as archives, which should never have
+their articles expired, you must construct an
+.I expire
+command that mentions all groups except your archive groups. When doing this,
+be sure not to forget the groups
+.Ch junk ,
+.Ch control ,
+and
+.Ch general .
+A likely command would be:
+.nf
+ /usr/lib/news/expire \-n all,!local.source,!mod.sources
+.fi
+.TP
+.B \-e
+Specify an expiration period. Normally
+.I expire
+removes articles that are older than 15 days. If you would like it to remove
+articles that are older than 5 days, you can type
+.nf
+ /usr/lib/news/expire \-e 5
+.fi
+If you would like it to remove articles from net.religion and net.politics
+that are older than
+23 days, and leave everything else alone, you can type
+.nf
+ /usr/lib/news/expire \-e 23 \-n net.religion net.politics
+.fi
+You can specify the \-e option as \-e15 instead of as \-e\ 15 if you want;
+this is for compatibility with old versions and old habits.
+.TP
+\-E
+Normally
+.I expire
+removes the record of an article from the history file at the same time it
+removes the article. One of the purposes of the history file is to prevent
+articles from being duplicated if a second copy arrives a while later,
+perhaps over some other path. If your site is extremely short on disk space,
+forcing you to specify a short expiration period in the \-e option, you can
+use the \-E option to ask that the information in the history file be kept
+round a bit longer, until the danger of duplicate arrival has passed. The
+command
+.nf
+ /usr/lib/news/expire \-e 7 \-E 21
+.fi
+Causes articles that are 7 or more days old to be removed, and history
+information that is 21 or more days old to be removed. If you use the \-E
+option, make sure that the value it specifies is always larger than the \-e
+option value, else you will end up with articles that are not in the history
+file; this can cause problems.
+.TP
+.B \-a
+Asks that articles be archived (usually in /usr/spool/oldnews) instead of being deleted.
+An example of its use would be
+.nf
+ /usr/lib/news/expire \-e 30 \-a net.sources,mod.sources,!net.sources.bugs
+.fi
+.B \-a
+may be used with
+.B \-n .
+If no pattern is given for
+.B \-a ,
+all newsgroups specified by
+.B \-n
+will be archived.
+.TP
+.B \-I
+instructs
+.I expire
+to ignore expiration dates stored in articles, and to look at the number of
+days that have passed since the article was received. Not very many articles
+have expiration dates in them.
+.TP
+.B \-i
+is like \-I, but it will look at the number of days that have passed and also
+at the explicit expiration date, and it will remove the article if either of
+those has passed.
+.TP
+\-v
+sets the verbosity mode. If you have specified a complex collection of
+options and they are not having the effect that you would like, then set \-v2
+or \-v3 to find out what is going on. Values from 0 to 6 are meaningful, and
+\-v1 is the default. \-v0 will turn off messages, and \-v6 will cause
+.I expire
+to print every possible message.
+.TP
+\-p
+causes
+.I expire
+to use the date the article was posted, rather than the date it arrived at
+your machine, as the basis for expiration. Every now and then there is a
+.Ch "time warp"
+that causes a batch of very very old news to be dumped onto the
+network; judicious use of the \-p option can eradicate it.
+.TP
+\-f
+asks
+.I expire
+to remove messages sent by a particular user, regardless of the newsgroup
+that they are in, and regardless of how old they are.
+This option is intended not so much to selectively censor
+voluminous posters (though it has certainly been used for that) but to
+recover when a
+.I notesfiles
+site (running different news software) accidentally releases a duplicate
+batch of old news. An example of its use is
+.nf
+ /usr/lib/news/expire \-f rlr@pyuxd.UUCP
+.fi
+Any article whose From: field exactly matches the argument to the \-f option
+will be removed.
+.TP
+\-h
+causes
+.I expire
+to ignore the history file, and do its expiration by looking at every article
+file in the spool directory. This is phenomenally slow\(emit can take 5 or 6
+hours on an otherwise idle Vax 750\(embut if your history file is damaged and
+you cannot use
+.I find(1)
+because you are relying on expiration dates stored inside articles, then you
+have no other choice.
+.TP
+\-r
+causes
+.I expire
+to rebuild the history file in addition to doing expiration. The \-r option
+implies the \-h option; it scans every article in the spool directory and
+builds a new set of history and
+.I dbm(3X)
+files. It also performs expiration, so if you want to rebuild the history
+file while preserving all articles (as you might want to do on an archival
+file computer), you must specify
+.nf
+ /usr/lib/news/expire \-r \-I \-e 999999
+.fi
+to prevent expiration from taking place.
+If you do not rely on expiration dates stored inside articles, it is a good
+tonic to run the following sequence of commands once every now and then:
+.nf
+ find /usr/spool/news \-size 0 \-o \-mtime +90 \-exec rm \-f {} \;
+ /usr/lib/news/expire \-r
+.fi
+This will remove junk files that have somehow managed to find their way into
+the spooling directory, and then it will rebuild the history file.
+.TP
+\-u
+causes the minimum article-number field in the active file to be updated.
+This is used when converting from 2.10.1 news to later versions.
+.SH SEE ALSO
+inews(1),
+postnews(1),
+getdate(3),
+news(5),
+recnews(8),
+sendnews(8),
+uurec(8)
+.SH BUGS
+If
+.I inews(1)
+is run while
+.I expire
+is running, it can cause the article that inews is trying to insert to be
+absent from your history file. There is no automatic interlock between
+.I inews(1)
+and
+.I expire,
+so you must take care to turn off
+.I inews(1)
+while
+.I expire
+is running. This bug will likely be fixed soon, but for the moment be careful
+of it.
+.PP
+The newsgroup pattern argument to the \-n option is limited to 1024
+characters, which is about 8 lines of text.
projects / unix-history / commitdiff