[news.sysadmin] .rnews directory, what is it, and how to get it flushed out.

dan@hrc.UUCP (Dan Troxel) (05/22/89)

I had to stop uux due to too many processes. I noticed that .rnews has
a few megabytes of files in it's directory. How do I start
news back up to take care of it? And what exactly is .rnews used for?

andy@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Andy Clews) (05/23/89)

From article <199620@hrc.UUCP>, by dan@hrc.UUCP (Dan Troxel):
> 
> I had to stop uux due to too many processes. I noticed that .rnews has
> a few megabytes of files in it's directory. How do I start
> news back up to take care of it? And what exactly is .rnews used for?

/usr/spool/news/.rnews is a directory which holds batched articles when
they have been received from your feed host, if your news s/w has been
built with the SPOOLNEWS option defined.  Periodic execution of
/usr/lib/news/inews -u should unbatch these files into the correct
newsgroups and delete the batch files afterwards.  Therefore .rnews
should be empty after an inews -u run.
-- 
Andy Clews, Computing Service, Univ. of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QN, ENGLAND
JANET: andy@syma.sussex.ac.uk   BITNET: andy%syma.sussex.ac.uk@uk.ac
Voice: +44 273 606755 ext.2129

karl@giza.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) (05/25/89)

andy@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Andy Clews) writes:
   /usr/spool/news/.rnews is a directory which holds batched articles when
   they have been received from your feed host, if your news s/w has been
   built with the SPOOLNEWS option defined.

Also, when expire(8) is running and has locked the active file,
incoming news batches are dropped in /usr/spool/news/.rnews as a
holding area until expire completes.

   Periodic execution of
   /usr/lib/news/inews -u should unbatch these files into the correct
   newsgroups and delete the batch files afterwards.

`inews' knows no option -u.  It is instead -U and must be used when
invoked as `rnews.'  This is the Unspool mode; it should be run
periodically by itself via cron, and is also how expire(8) completes
its work: After the actual expiration is complete, expire exec's
"rnews -U" directly, to flush the .rnews area.

--Karl

jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck) (05/25/89)

In article <1019@syma.sussex.ac.uk> andy@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Andy Clews) writes:
>/usr/spool/news/.rnews is a directory which holds batched articles when
>they have been received from your feed host, if your news s/w has been
>built with the SPOOLNEWS option defined.

It also holds incoming batches while expire is running, whether or not
SPOOLNEWS is defined.  expire fires of an "rnews -U" command at the end
to unspool everything.
-- 
-- Joe Buck	jbuck@epimass.epi.com, uunet!epimass.epi.com!jbuck