I'm running an INN server and I'd like to generate stats on 'where the
posts go' -- which groups are getting the most posts in a given day.

Is this information already collected somewhere and I'm just unaware of
it? Otherwise, it seems that the logs going to /var/log/news/news would
be sufficient if they included the Newsgroups: header instead of just
the Message-ID, but I don't see an option to include that in the logs on
reading the inn.conf man page. This would actually be ideal because I
could then feed the logs into my log analytics tool and get really
detailed.

Suggestions?

John

Hi John,

> I'm running an INN server and I'd like to generate stats on 'where the
> posts go' -- which groups are getting the most posts in a given day.
>
> Is this information already collected somewhere and I'm just unaware of
> it? Otherwise, it seems that the logs going to /var/log/news/news would
> be sufficient if they included the Newsgroups: header instead of just
> the Message-ID, but I don't see an option to include that in the logs on
> reading the inn.conf man page. This would actually be ideal because I
> could then feed the logs into my log analytics tool and get really
> detailed.
>
> Suggestions?

This information is indeed not directly logged. Knowing the Message-ID
(logged), you may however just run the following command from your
script to get the comma-separated list of newsgroups:

% grephistory '<86ilbnqufw.fsf@building-m.net>' | sm -H | grep
Newsgroups | cut -f2 -d' '
news.software.nntp

--
Julien ÉLIE

« Si l'on veut qu'une chose soit faite, il y a trois façons de s'y
prendre : la faire soi-même, demander à quelqu'un de la faire, ou
interdire à ses enfants de la faire. » (Bill Vaughan)

Julien ÉLIE <iulius@nom-de-mon-site.com.invalid> writes:

> Hi John,
>
>> I'm running an INN server and I'd like to generate stats on 'where the
>> posts go' -- which groups are getting the most posts in a given day.
>> Is this information already collected somewhere and I'm just unaware
>> of
>> it? Otherwise, it seems that the logs going to /var/log/news/news would
>> be sufficient if they included the Newsgroups: header instead of just
>> the Message-ID, but I don't see an option to include that in the logs on
>> reading the inn.conf man page. This would actually be ideal because I
>> could then feed the logs into my log analytics tool and get really
>> detailed.
>> Suggestions?
>
> This information is indeed not directly logged. Knowing the
> Message-ID (logged), you may however just run the following command
> from your script to get the comma-separated list of newsgroups:
>
> % grephistory '<86ilbnqufw.fsf@building-m.net>' | sm -H | grep
> Newsgroups | cut -f2 -d' '
> news.software.nntp

Thank you, that's a good start... an hourly cron job and a simple shell
script could get me pretty close, I think.

john

On Jun 16, 2023 at 10:48:51 AM CDT, "John" <john@building-m.net> wrote:

> I'm running an INN server and I'd like to generate stats on 'where the
> posts go' -- which groups are getting the most posts in a given day.
>
> Is this information already collected somewhere and I'm just unaware of
> it? Otherwise, it seems that the logs going to /var/log/news/news would
> be sufficient if they included the Newsgroups: header instead of just
> the Message-ID, but I don't see an option to include that in the logs on
> reading the inn.conf man page. This would actually be ideal because I
> could then feed the logs into my log analytics tool and get really
> detailed.
>
> Suggestions?
>
> John

I haven't looked at it in much detail but intend to try to implement at some
point, but in the INN source's contrib folder there is an analyze-traffic
script:

########################################################################
# # analyze-traffic
# # Written by Jeffrey M. Vinocur <jeff@litech.org>
# This work is hereby placed in the public domain by its author.
# # Script for keeping track of which newsgroups are receiving the most
# traffic (by article count or byte usage), and which peer is most
# responsible for the traffic in each high-traffic group.
# ########################################################################
# # Usage:
# # 1. Add an entry in $pathetc/newsfeeds like the one below, and issue
# `ctlinnd reload newsfeeds traffic` (you can change the path to
# whatever you like).
# # analyze!\
# :*\
# :Tf,WgsbmnN:/usr/local/news/log/traffic
# # You may find it useful to restrict the articles being logged,
# either by modifing the wildmat pattern, or by using the /exclude
# notation to indicate articles that have passed through some
# servers should not be included.
# # Also, if $USE_ALL_GROUPS (see below) is false, you can leave out
# the N flag, which may eliminate some parsing errors.
# # 2. Wait for some data.
# # 3. Run analyze-traffic on the logged data (you can pass the
# filename as an argument or feed the data on standard input).
# You probably want to pipe it into a file, `less`, or `tail` as the
# output is a line for every group that has received an article
# according the input data.
# # There are some options hardcoded into the script below, under
# "Constants" -- check for customization, if you like.
# # 4. Be sure to comment out the newsfeeds entry when done, or set
# up some sort of log rotation, or INN will eventually fill up your
# disk...