Is there an easy-ish way to get a list of newsgroups for which spool files
exist (tradspool) but the newsgroup has been deleted?

I thought the scanspool program was supposed to do that, and when ran it does
report a few groups not in the active file, but when I'm feeding all my
articles to a new server I see a ton of articles being rejected for groups
that no longer exist in the active file, and they aren't mentioned by
scanspool.

In my case I believe what happened was initially I created a lot of groups
that no longer exist, because I'm creating an archive, but later processed
control messages automatically which removed groups. I'd like to get a list of
these groups and re-add them with a status of 'x' to preserve them.

On 11/10/2023 21:48, Jesse Rehmer wrote:
> Is there an easy-ish way to get a list of newsgroups for which spool files
> exist (tradspool) but the newsgroup has been deleted?
>
> I thought the scanspool program was supposed to do that, and when ran it does
> report a few groups not in the active file, but when I'm feeding all my
> articles to a new server I see a ton of articles being rejected for groups
> that no longer exist in the active file, and they aren't mentioned by
> scanspool.
>
> In my case I believe what happened was initially I created a lot of groups
> that no longer exist, because I'm creating an archive, but later processed
> control messages automatically which removed groups. I'd like to get a list of
> these groups and re-add them with a status of 'x' to preserve them.

I'm using INN2, and I used "wanttrash" to obtain them in inn.conf. (with
this you accept everything, and all finish in "junk" group).

Sincerely

--
Ivo Gandolfo

Hi Jesse,

> Is there an easy-ish way to get a list of newsgroups for which spool files
> exist (tradspool) but the newsgroup has been deleted?
>
> I thought the scanspool program was supposed to do that, and when ran it does
> report a few groups not in the active file, but when I'm feeding all my
> articles to a new server I see a ton of articles being rejected for groups
> that no longer exist in the active file, and they aren't mentioned by
> scanspool.

scanspool should report these inexisting groups in the active file.
Do you have an example of path + file name of an article?

Like the file:
/home/news/spool/articles/news/software/nntp/1842
for which the news.software.nntp group is not listed in your active file
but scanspool does not say so with a "not an active group directory"
message?

--
Julien ÉLIE

« Medicus curat, natura sanat. »

On Oct 12, 2023 at 2:09:22 AM CDT, "Julien ÉLIE"
<iulius@nom-de-mon-site.com.invalid> wrote:

> Hi Jesse,
>
>> Is there an easy-ish way to get a list of newsgroups for which spool files
>> exist (tradspool) but the newsgroup has been deleted?
>>
>> I thought the scanspool program was supposed to do that, and when ran it does
>> report a few groups not in the active file, but when I'm feeding all my
>> articles to a new server I see a ton of articles being rejected for groups
>> that no longer exist in the active file, and they aren't mentioned by
>> scanspool.
>
> scanspool should report these inexisting groups in the active file.
> Do you have an example of path + file name of an article?
>
> Like the file:
> /home/news/spool/articles/news/software/nntp/1842
> for which the news.software.nntp group is not listed in your active file
> but scanspool does not say so with a "not an active group directory"
> message?

I'm starting to think the scanspool process was stopped before it completed. I
was redirecting STDOUT and STDERR to a file, running in a screen, and assumed
it completed, but I may have forgotten it was running when I applied updates
and rebooted - whoop. It's re-running now, I'll check back in a day or two.

Jesse Rehmer <jesse.rehmer@blueworldhosting.com> wrote:

> Is there an easy-ish way to get a list of newsgroups for which spool files
> exist (tradspool) but the newsgroup has been deleted?

I don't know about tradspool (I don't use it), but I keep some groups in
timehash.

This one-liner worked:

[news@kvm ~]$ find spool/articles -type f -exec grep ^Newsgroups: {} \; | awk '{print $2}'|sed 's/,/\n/g' | sort | uniq

It will report groups even if they're mentioned in the body (if someone
reposts an article, for example, and "Newsgroups:" appears at the start of
the line).