OVERCHAN(8)

NAME
overchan - Batch update the INN overview database

SYNOPSIS
overchan [file ...]

DESCRIPTION
overchan reads overview data from the specified files or from standard input if no files are specified, and writes that data into the INN overview database. (The file "-" means to read data from standard input as well.)

Normally, overview data is stored by innd for articles as they're accepted. For performance, however, it's sometimes useful to have overview data written by a separate process. To do this, set useoverchan to true in inn.conf to tell innd to not write overview data directly and then add an overchan channel in newsfeeds:

    overview!:*:Tc,WnteO:<pathbin>/overchan

where <pathbin> is pathbin in inn.conf. Additionally, overchan can be used to bulk-load overview data from appropriately formatted batch files (such as overflow files from an overchan channel).

Each line of input should have the following format:

    <token> <arrived> <expires> <data>

where <token> is the storage API token of the article in textual form (surrounded by "@" characters), <arrived> is the arrival timestamp of the article in seconds since epoch, <expires> is the expiration time of the article in seconds since epoch or 0 if there is none, and <data> is the tab-separated overview data. Each of these fields must be separated by a single space.

HISTORY
Written by Rob Robertson <rob@violet.berkeley.edu> and Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews. Man page rewritten in POD by Russ Allbery <eagle@eyrie.org>.

SEE ALSO
inn.conf(5), innd(8), newsfeeds(5)