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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: C news shell script questions
Message-ID: <1990Sep4.165941.26080@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1990Sep4.144525.7423@wrl.dec.com>
Date: Tue, 4 Sep 90 16:59:41 GMT

In article <1990Sep4.144525.7423@wrl.dec.com> reid@wrl.dec.com (Brian Reid) writes:
>What code can I put in a shell script that will determine that a site is
>running C news?

Hmm.  Aside from the obvious question of knowing where the news directories
are, it should not be too hard.  One reasonable approach would be to look
for /usr/lib/news/mailname, a file that is normally a required part of
C News (it's used to generate From: lines in inews) and doesn't exist in
B News that I know of.

>Given that I have determined that a site is running C news, is there some way
>I can determine which article numbers are unexpired, other than the obvious
>and time-consuming hack of looking in the spool directory?

There is no way to determine what article numbers are unexpired other than
looking in the spool directory, not if you want precise results.  Looking
at min/max in the active file gives you only a crude approximation, since
a precise answer requires a list or a bitmap, not just a pair of numbers.

If all you want is a crude approximation, encourage C News sites that use
arbitron to run upact or updatemin regularly.  The programs are in our
distribution, although at the moment we don't specifically suggest regular
runs.  That will probably change.
-- 
TCP/IP: handling tomorrow's loads today| Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
OSI: handling yesterday's loads someday|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry