NINPATHS(8)



NINPATHS(8)               InterNetNews Documentation               NINPATHS(8)

NAME
       ninpaths - Report Usenet Path: statistics (new inpaths)

SYNOPSIS
       ninpaths -p -d dumpfile

       ninpaths -r site -u dumpfile [-u dumpfile ...] -v level

DESCRIPTION
       This is an efficient and space-saving inpaths reporting program.  It
       works as follows:  you feed it the Path: lines via an INN channel feed
       or some other similar method, and from time to time the program writes
       all its internal counters accumulated so far to a dump file.  Another
       instance of the program picks up all the dump files, adds them up and
       formats them into the report.  The purpose of the final report is to
       summarize the frequency of occurrence of sites in the Path: headers of
       articles.

       Some central sites accumulate the Path: data from many news servers
       running this program or one like it, and then report statistics on the
       most frequently seen news servers in Usenet article Path: lines.  The
       sendinpaths script can be run daily to mail the accumulated statistics
       to such a site and remove the old dump files.

       You can get a working setup by doing the following:

       1.  Create a directory at pathlog/path (replacing pathlog here and in
           all steps that follow with the full path to your INN log
           directory).  Do not change the name of the "path" subdirectory
           because it is used by sendinpaths.

       2.  Set up a channel feed using an entry like:

               inpaths!:*:Tc,WP:<pathbin>/ninpaths -p -d <pathlog>/path/inpaths.%d

           if your version of INN supports "WP" (2.0 and later all do).
           Replace <pathbin> with the full path to your INN binaries
           directory, and <pathlog> with the full path to your INN log
           directory.

           Note that the naming convention of the generated inpaths dump files
           should not be changed.  sendinpaths explicitly searches files whose
           name starts with "inpaths." in the <pathlog>/path directory.

       3.  Run the following command to start logging these statistics:

               ctlinnd reload newsfeeds 'inpaths feed setup'

       4.  Enter into your news user crontab these two lines:

               6   6 * * *   <pathbin>/ctlinnd flush inpaths!
               10  6 * * *   <pathbin>/sendinpaths

           (the actual time doesn't matter).  This will force ninpaths to
           generate a dump file once a day.  Then, a few minutes later,
           sendinpaths collects the dumps, makes a report, sends the collected
           statistics, and deletes the old dumps.

           Note that you can manually generate a report without mailing it,
           and without deleting processed dump files, with "sendinpaths -n".
           Another useful command is "sendinpaths -c" so as to receive a copy
           of the e-mail sent by sendinpaths and therefore make sure that
           everything is properly set.

       5.  In a couple of days, check that your daily statistics properly
           appear in <http://top1000.anthologeek.net/>.

OPTIONS
       -d dumpfile
           Save dumps in dumpfile.  Any %d in dumpfile will be replaced with
           the current system time when the dump is made.  This option should
           be used with -p.

           The format of these dump files is described below.

       -p  Read Path: lines from standard input.

       -r site
           Generate a report for site.  Generally site should be the value of
           pathhost from inn.conf.

       -u dumpfile
           Read data from dumpfile.  This option can be repeated to read data
           from multiple dump files.

       -v level
           Set the verbosity level of the report.  Valid values for level are
           0, 1, and 2, with 2 being the default.

DUMP FILE FORMAT
       The format of the generated dump files is:

          !!NINP <version> <start-time> <end-time> <nb-sites> <nb-articles> <average-time>
          <site_0> <count_0> <site_1> <count_1> <site_2> <count_2> ...
          !!NLREC
          :<site_a>!<site_b>,<count_ab>:<site_c>!<site_d>,<count_cd> ...
          !!NEND <nb-relations>

       where times are UNIX timestamps.  Then, nb-sites records follow.  Each
       record is separated by a space or a new line, and consists of a host
       name site_n followed by a number of appearances count_n.  The number of
       processed Path: header lines is nb-articles.

       Afterwards, nb-relations relations follow.  In 3.0.x versions, the
       relations are separated by a space or a new line, and their syntax is
       "site_a!site_b!count_ab" where site_a and site_b are numbers of the
       site records starting at 0.

       In 3.1.x versions, the relations begin with a colon and are separated
       by either nothing or a new line.  Their syntax is
       ":site_a!site_b,count_ab" with the same meaning as in previous
       versions.  The count can be omitted when it is 1.  More than two sites
       can be specified in the relation (":site_a!site_b!site_c,count_abc").

       For instance:

           !!NINP 3.1.1 1302944821 1302944838 5 2 1302944826
           newsgate.cistron.nl 1 news.trigofacile.com 2 news.ecp.fr 2 usenet.stanford.edu 1
           bleachbot 1
           !!NLREC
           :3!2:2!1,2:4!0:0!2
           !!NLEND 4

       where the two processed Path: headers are:

           Path: news.trigofacile.com!news.ecp.fr!usenet.stanford.edu!not-for-mail
           Path: news.trigofacile.com!news.ecp.fr!newsgate.cistron.nl!bleachbot!not-for-mail

NOTES
       If your INN doesn't have the "WP" feed flag (1.5 does not, 1.6 and 1.7
       do, 2.0 and later all do), use the following newsfeeds entry:

          inpaths!:*:Tc,WH:<pathbin>/ginpaths

       where ginpaths is the following script:

           #!/bin/sh
           exec egrep '^Path: ' | <pathbin>/ninpaths -p -d <pathlog>/path/inpaths.%d

       replacing <pathbin> and <pathlog> as above.

HISTORY
       This is a slightly modified version of Olaf Titz's original ninpaths
       program, which is posted to alt.sources and kept on his WWW archive
       under <http://sites.inka.de/~bigred/sw/>.

       The idea and some implementation details for ninpaths come from the
       original inpaths program, but most of the code has been rewritten for
       clarity.  This program is in the public domain.

       $Id: ninpaths.pod 9383 2011-12-25 20:56:10Z iulius $

SEE ALSO
       newsfeeds(5), sendinpaths(8).

INN 2.6.4                         2015-09-20                       NINPATHS(8)

Man(1) output converted with man2html
list of all man pages