archive8

Usage

Overview

Archive makes copies of files specified on its standard input. It is normally run either as a channel feed under innd(8), or by a script before expire(8) is run.

Archive reads the named input file, or standard input if no file is given. The input is taken as a set of lines. Blank lines and lines starting with a number sign (``#'') are ignored. All other lines should specify the name of a file to archive. If a filename is not an absolute pathname, it is taken to be relative to /var/spool/news.

Files are copied to a directory within the archive directory, /var/spool/news/news.archive. The default is to create a hierarchy that mimics the input files; intermediate directories will be created as needed. For example, the input file comp/sources/unix/2211 (article 2211 in the newsgroup comp.sources.unix) will be copied to /var/spool/news/news.archive/comp/sources/unix/2211.

Options

-a archive

If the ``-a'' flag is used then its argument specifies the directory to archive in instead of the default.

-f

If the ``-f'' flag is used, then all directory names will be flattened out, replacing the slashes with periods. In this case, the file would be copied to /var/spool/news/news.archive/comp.sources.unix/2211.

-i

If the ``-i'' flag is used, then archive will append one line to the specified index file for each article that it copies. This line will contain the destination name and the Message-ID and Subject headers.

-m

Files are copied by making a link. If that fails a new file is created. If the ``-m'' flag is used, then the file will be copied to the destination, and the input file will be replaced with a symbolic link pointing to the new file.

-r

By default, archive sets its standard error to /var/log/news/errlog. To suppress this redirection, use the ``-r'' flag.

Exit status

If the input is exhausted, archive will exit with a zero status. If an I/O error occures, it will try to spool its input, copying it to a file. If there was no input filename, the standard input will be copied to /var/spool/news/out.going/archive and the program will exit. If an input filename was given, a temporary file named input.bch (if input is an absolute pathname) or /var/spool/news/out.going/input.bch (if the filename does not begin with a slash) is created. Once the input is copied, archive will try to rename this temporary file to be the name of the input file, and then exit.

Examples

A typical newsfeeds(5) entry to archive most source newsgroups is as follows:

source-archive\
	:!*,*sources*,!*wanted*,!*.d\
	:Tc,Wn\
	:/usr/lib/news/bin/archive -f -i \
	    /usr/spool/news/news.archive/INDEX