ACTIVE(5)

NAME
active, active.times - list of active Usenet newsgroups

DESCRIPTION
The file /var/lib/news/active lists the newsgroups that the local site receives. Each newsgroup should be listed only once. Each line specifies one group; their order in the file does not matter. Within each newsgroup, articles are assigned unique names, which are monotonically increasing numbers.

If an article is posted to newsgroups not mentioned in this file, those newsgroups are ignored. If no valid newsgroups are specified, the article is filed into the newsgroup ``junk'' and only propagated to sites that receive the ``junk'' newsgroup.

Each line consists of four fields specified by a space:

            name himark lomark flags

The first field is the name of the newsgroup. The second field is the highest article number that has been used in that newsgroup. The third field is the lowest article number in the group; this number is not guaranteed to be accurate, and should only be taken to be a hint. Note that because of article cancellations, there may be gaps in the numbering sequence. If the lowest article number is greater then the highest article number, then there are no articles in the newsgroup. In order to make it possible to update an entry in-place without rewriting the entire file, the second and third fields are padded out with leading zeros to make them a fixed width.

The fourth field can contain one of the following flags:

    y        Local postings are allowed
    n        No local postings are allowed, only remote ones
    m        The group is moderated and all postings must be approved
    j        Articles in this group are not kept, but only passed on
    x        Articles cannot be posted to this newsgroup
    =foo.bar Articles are locally filed into the ``foo.bar'' group

If a newsgroup has the ``j'' flag, then no articles will be filed into that newsgroup and local postings to that group should not be generated. If an article for such a newsgroup is received from a remote site, it will be filed into the ``junk'' newsgroup if it is not cross-posted. This is different from not having a newsgroup listed in the file because sites can subscribe to ``j'' newsgroups and the article will be propagated to them.

If the fourth field of a newsgroup starts with an equal sign, then the newsgroup is an alias. Articles can be posted to the group, but will be treated as if they were posted to the group named after the equal sign. The second and third fields are ignored. Note that the Newsgroup header is not modified (Alias groups are typically used during a transition, and are typically created with ctlinnd(8)). An alias newsgroup should not point to another alias.

The file /var/lib/news/active.times provides a chronological record of when newsgroups are created. This file is normally updated by innd(8) whenever a ctlinnd ``newgroup'' command is done. Each line consist of three fields:

    name time creator

The first field is the name of the newsgroup. The second field is the time it was created, expressed as the number of seconds since the epoch — i.e., a time_t; see gettimeofday(2). The third field is the electronic mail address of the person who created the group.

HISTORY
Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews.

SEE ALSO
ctlinnd(8), innd(8).