EXPIREOVER(8)

NAME
       expireover   -  Expire  entries  from  the  news  overview
       database

SYNOPSIS
       expireover [ -a ] [ -D overviewdir ] [ -f file ] [ -n ]  [
       -O overview.fmt ] [ -s ] [ -v ] [ -z ] [ file...  ]

DESCRIPTION
       Expireover   expires   entries   from  the  news  overview
       database.  It reads a list of pathnames (relative  to  the
       spool  directory,  /var/spool/news),  from  the  specified
       files or standard input if none are  specified.   (A  file
       name  of ``-'' may be used to specify the standard input.)
       It then removes any mention of  those  articles  from  the
       appropriate overview database.

OPTIONS
       -z     If  the  ``-z''  flag  is  used,  then the input is
              assumed to be sorted such that all  entries  for  a
              newsgroup  appear together so that it can be purged
              at once.  This flag can be useful  when  used  with
              the sorted output of expire(8)'s ``-z'' flag.

       -s     If  the  ``-s''  flag is used, then expireover will
              read the spool directory for all  groups  mentioned
              in  the  active(5)  file,  and  remove the overview
              entries of any articles that do not appear  in  the
              directory.

       -f     To  specify an alternate file, use the ``-f'' flag;
              a name of ``-''  is  taken  to  mean  the  standard
              input.

       -a     The  ``-a'' flag reads the spool directory and adds
              any missing overview entries.  It will create files
              if  necessary.   This  can  be used to initialize a
              database, or to sync up a  overview  database  that
              may  be  lacking articles due to a crash.  Overchan
              should be running,  to  ensure  that  any  incoming
              articles get included.  Using this flag implies the
              ``-s'' flag; the ``-f'' flag may  be  used  to  add
              only a subset of the newsgroups.

       -v     To see a list of the entries that would be added or
              deleted, use the ``-v'' flag.

       -n     To perform no real updates, use the ``-n'' flag.

       -D     The ``-D'' flag can be used to  specify  where  the
              databases  are  stored.   The  default directory is
              /var/spool/news/over.view.

       -O     The ``-O'' flag may be used to specify an alternate
              location for the overview.fmt(5) file; this is nor-
              mally only useful for debugging.

HISTORY
       Written by  Rob  Robertson  lt;rob@violet.berkeley.edu  and
       Rich   $alz  lt;rsalz@uunet.uu.net  (with  help  from  Dave
       Lawrence lt;tale@uunet.uu.net) for InterNetNews.   This  is
       revision 1.8, dated 1996/10/29.

SEE ALSO
       expire(8) overview.fmt(5).