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<TITLE>The checkgroups Message</TITLE>
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<H2><A NAME="SECTION0019830000">The checkgroups Message</A></H2>
<A NAME="cnewscontrolcheckgroups"></A>
Checkgroups messages are sent by news administrators to make
all sites within a network synchronize their active files with
the realities of Usenet. For example, commercial Internet service
providers might send out such a message to their customers' sites. Once
a month, the ``official'' checkgroups message for the major
hierarchies is posted to comp.announce.newgroups by its
moderator. However, it is posted as an ordinary article, not as a
control message. To perform the checkgroups operation, save
this article to a file, say /tmp/check, remove everything up to
the beginning of the control message itself, and feed it to the
checkgroups script using the following command:
<PRE>
# su news -c "/usr/lib/news/bin/ctl/checkgroups" <
/tmp/check
</PRE><P>
This will update your newsgroups file, adding the groups
listed in localgroups. The old newsgroups file will be
moved to newsgroups.bac. Note that posting the message locally
will rarely work, because inews refuses to accept that large
an article.
<P>
If C-News finds mismatches between the checkgroups list and the
active file, it will produce a list of commands that would bring
your site up to date, and mail it to the news administrator. The output
typically looks like this:
<PRE>
From news Sun Jan 30 16:18:11 1994
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 94 16:18 MET
From: news (News Subsystem)
To: usenet
Subject: Problems with your active file
The following newsgroups are not valid and should be removed.
alt.ascii-art
bionet.molbio.gene-org
comp.windows.x.intrisics
de.answers
You can do this by executing the commands:
/usr/lib/news/bin/maint/delgroup alt.ascii-art
/usr/lib/news/bin/maint/delgroup bionet.molbio.gene-org
/usr/lib/news/bin/maint/delgroup comp.windows.x.intrisics
/usr/lib/news/bin/maint/delgroup de.answers
The following newsgroups were missing.
comp.binaries.cbm
comp.databases.rdb
comp.os.geos
comp.os.qnx
comp.unix.user-friendly
misc.legal.moderated
news.newsites
soc.culture.scientists
talk.politics.crypto
talk.politics.tibet
</PRE><P>
When you receive a message like this from your news system, don't
believe it blindly. Depending on who sent the checkgroups
message, it may lack a few groups or even entire hierarchies; so
you should be careful about removing any groups. If you find
groups are listed as missing that you want to carry at your site,
you have to add them using the addgroup script. Save the list
of missing groups to a file and feed it to the following little
script:
<PRE>
#!/bin/sh
cd /usr/lib/news
while read group; do
if grep -si "^$group[[:space:]].*moderated" newsgroup; then
mod=m
else
mod=y
fi
/usr/lib/news/bin/maint/addgroup $group $mod
done
</PRE>
<P>
<P><P><BR> <HR>
<P><ADDRESS>
<I>Andrew Anderson <BR>
Thu Mar 7 23:22:06 EST 1996</I>
</ADDRESS>
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