=head1 NAME

ninpaths - Report Usenet Path statistics (new inpaths)

=head1 SYNOPSIS

B<ninpaths> B<-p> B<-d> I<dumpfile>

B<ninpaths> B<-r> I<site> B<-u> I<dumpfile> [B<-u> I<dumpfile> ...] B<-v>
I<level>

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This is an efficient and space-saving inpaths reporting program.  It works
as follows:  you feed it the Path lines via an INN channel feed or some
other similar method, and from time to time the program writes all its
internal counters accumulated so far to a dump file.  Another instance of
the program picks up all the dump files, adds them up and formats them
into the report.  The purpose of the final report is to summarize the
frequency of occurrence of sites in the Path headers of articles.

Some central sites accumulate the Path data from many news servers running
this program or one like it, and then report statistics on the most
frequently seen news servers in Usenet article Path lines.  The
B<sendinpaths> shell script can be run once a month to mail the
accumulated statistics to such a site and remove the old dump files.

You can get a working setup by doing the following:

=over 4

=item 1.

Create a directory at I<pathlog>/path (replacing I<pathlog> here and in
all steps that follow with the full path to your INN log directory).

=item 2.

Set up a channel feed using an entry like:

    inpaths!:*:Tc,WP:ninpaths -p -d <pathlog>/path/inpaths.%d

if your version of INN supports WP (2.0 and later all do).  Replace
<pathlog> with the full path to your INN log directory.

=item 3.

Enter into your news user crontab something like:

    6 6 * * *   ctlinnd flush inpaths!

(the actual time doesn't matter).  This will force B<ninpaths> to generate
a dump file once a day.

=item 4.

Once per month, run the B<sendinpaths> script, which collects the dumps,
makes a report, and then deletes the old dumps.  (You can generate a
report without mailing it and without deleting it with C<sendinpaths -n>.)

=back

=head1 OPTIONS

=over 4

=item B<-d> I<dumpfile>

Save dumps in I<dumpfile>.  Any C<%d> in I<dumpfile> will be replaced with
the current system time when the dump is made.  This option should be used
with B<-p>.

=item B<-p>

Read Path lines from standard input.

=item B<-r> I<site>

Generate a report for I<site>.  Generally I<site> should be the value of
I<pathhost> from F<inn.conf>.

=item B<-u> I<dumpfile>

Read data from I<dumpfile>.  This option can be repeated to read data from
multiple dump files.

=item B<-v> I<level>

Set the verbosity level of the report.  Valid values for I<level> are 0,
1, and 2, with 2 being the default.

=back

=head1 NOTES

If your INN doesn't have the WP feed flag (1.5 does not, 1.6 does, 1.7 I
don't know, 2.0 and later all do), use the following newsfeeds entry:

   inpaths!:*:Tc,WH:ginpaths

where B<ginpaths> is the following script:

    #!/bin/sh
    exec egrep '^Path: ' | ninpaths -p -d <pathlog>/path/inpaths.%d

replacing <pathlog> as above.

=head1 SEE ALSO

newsfeeds(5), sendinpaths(8)

This is a slightly modified version of Olaf Titz's original ninpaths
program, which is posted to alt.sources and kept on his WWW archive under
L<http://sites.inka.de/~bigred/sw/>.

=head1 HISTORY

B<ninpaths> was written by Olaf Titz <olaf@bigred.inka.de>.

The idea and some implementation details for ninpaths come from the
original inpaths program, but most of the code has been rewritten for
clarity.  This program is in the public domain.

=cut
