The good news is, that most tasks can be automated.
That's the time for news expiration, done by a fast and tiny program called Expire.
In a previous chapter it has been stated, that only the Changi server itself has permission to touch the local newsbase. Well, Expire is an exception. It will connect the local server and force it in a special mode. In this mode Changi has no permission to change the local newsbase. Local posts are rejected, incoming articles transmitted by Rnews are redirected to a temporary batch file for later processing.
Expire will then run through the history file. This file, or, to be more precisely, these two files had been created by Changi in order to record each article stored in the local newsbase. Expire deletes outdated articles and removes their corresponding entries in the history. After having done that, it will put back the Changi server in normal running mode and terminate.
Expire may also be used to check and, if necessary, repair the history files.
You may manually add or remove newsgroups by calling another client program included in the Changi package, named Chanco. This program will connect to Changi in a way, which is different from the ordinary connection used by newsreaders and which needs special authorization. In fact, Chanco can do more than just adding or removing newsgroups, but is a very powerfull tool to control your server. You may kick out undesirable clients, change most of Changi's command line options on the fly or even shutdown the server. If authorization is properly set, you may even control the server remotely.
A Java version of Chanco called JavaChanco has been included too, but doesn't support all functions of the command line program.
So far the shining part of newsgroup maintenance. What Changi currently can't do is maintaining subscription lists.
In single user environments you must manually update the list of newsgroups you want to retrieve from your provider. For provider installations with leased lines there's currently no tool available to maintain the list of subscriptions of your downlinks.
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URL: changi/manual/whatmain.html Created: 21 July 1997 Revised: 21 July 1997 Author: harald@os2point.ping.de |