SYNOPSIS
tdx-util [-AFgio] [-a article] [-n newsgroup] [-p path] [-R path]
DESCRIPTION
tdx-util is an administrative interface to the tradindexed overview
method for INN. It only works on tradindexed overview databases, not
on any other type of INN overview. It allows the administrator to dump
various information about the internal state of the overview, audit it
for errors, and rebuild portions of the overview database.
The tradindexed overview method should lock properly and therefore it
should be safe to run this utility and perform any operation it per-
forms, including full repairs or per-group overview rebuilds, while the
server is running. However, note that some of the operations performed
by this utility can take an extended period of time and will hold locks
in the overview database during that period, which depending on what
the server is doing may cause the server to stall until tdx-util com-
pletes its operation.
The dump operations are -i, which dumps the master index for the over-
view database, -g, which dumps the index for an individual group, and
-o, which dumps the overview information for a particular group
(including the additional metadata stored in the index). For -g and
-o, the -n option must also be given to specify a newsgroup to operate
on.
To audit the entire overview database for problems, use -A. Any prob-
lems found will be reported to standard error. There is not (yet) a
corresponding option to correct the errors found.
To rebuild the database for a particular newsgroup, use -R. The -R
option takes a path to a directory which contains all of the articles
for that newsgroup, one per file. The names of the files must be the
numbers of the articles in that group. (In other words, this directory
must be a traditional spool directory for that group.) The -n option
must also be given to specify the newsgroup for which the overview is
being rebuilt.
For all operations performed by tdx-util, a different overview database
than the one specified in inn.conf may be specified using the -p
option.
OPTIONS
-A Audit the entire overview database for problems. This runs the
internal consistency checks built into the tradindexed overview
implementation, checking such things as the validity and reachabil-
ity of all group index entries, the format of the individual over-
view entries, the correspondance of index entries to overview data,
and similar such things. No changes will be made to the database,
but problems will be reported to standard error.
-a article
To see what would be changed by -F, run tdx-util with -A first.
-g Dump the master index of the overview database. This contains sim-
ilar 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 base article number (the point at which the
group index begins), the count of articles in the group, the group
status flag, the time (in seconds since epoch) when that newsgroup
was deleted or 0 if it hasn't been, and the inode of the index file
for that group.
-i Dump the index of a particular group. The fields are, in order,
the article number, the offset of the data for that article in the
overview data file for that group, 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 (or 0 if there is no Expires
header), and the storage API token of the article.
If this option is given, the -n option must also be given to spec-
ify the newsgroup on which to act.
-n newsgroup
Specify the newsgroup on which to act, required for the -i, -o, and
-R options.
-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 the index file for that
group, the storage API token for that article, the arrival date for
that article on the server in RFC 822 date format, and the expira-
tion date for that article (from the Expires header) in RFC 822
date format if there is any.
If this option is given, the -n option must also be given to spec-
ify 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.
-p path
Act on the overview database rooted in path, overriding the over-
view path specified in inn.conf.
-R path
Rebuild the overview for a given group from the articles stored in
path. The articles must be in the form of a traditional spool
directory; in other words, each article must be in a separate file
and the name of the file must match the article number of the arti-
Dump the complete overview information for example.test:
tdx-util -o -n example.test
Audit the entire overview database for any problems:
tdx-util -A
Rebuild the overview information for example.test from a traditional
spool directory:
tdx-util -R /news/spool/articles/example/test -n example.test
The last command may be useful for recovering from a bad crash or cor-
rupted overview information for a particular group, if you are also
using the tradspool article storage method.
HISTORY
Written by Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> for InterNetNews.
$Id: tdx-util.8 7047 2004-12-19 19:41:49Z rra $
SEE ALSO
makehistory(8)
INN 2.4.2 2004-12-19 TDX-UTIL(8)
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