OVERCHAN (8)

NAME
     overchan - update the news overview database

SYNOPSIS
     overchan [ -D dir ] [ -c ] [ file... ]

DESCRIPTION
     Overchan reads article data from files or  standard  input  if  none  are
     specified.   (A  single  dash  in  the  file  list means to read standard
     input.)  It uses this information to update the news  overview  database.
     Overchan  is  designed  to be used by InterNetNews or the C News ``mkov''
     packages to update the database as the articles come  in.   The  database
     for each newsgroup is stored in a file named <config$_PATH_OVERVIEW> in a
     newsgroup directory within the overview database tree.

     Overchan locks the database file (by locking an  auxiliary  file)  before
     appending  the new data.  To purge data after articles have been expired,
     see expireover(8) .

     By default, overchan processes  its  input  as  an  INN  overview  stream
     written as a ``WO'' entry in the newsfeeds(5)  file, for example:

          overview:*:Tc,WO:<config$_PATH_NEWSBIN>/overchan

     This data consists of a line of text, separated into two parts by a  tab.
     The  first part is a list of all relative pathnames where the article has
     been written, with a single space between entries.  The  second  part  is
     the  data  to  be written into the overview file, except that the initial
     article number is omitted.  The data in  the  overview  files  should  be
     expired  by  running  expireover(8) .  This is normally done by adding the
     ``expireover'' flag to the news.daily(8) invocation.

OPTIONS

     -c   To process the output of the mkov(8) program, use the  ``-c''  flag.
          This format is described in the ``nov'' distribution.

     -D   The ``-D'' flag can be used  to  specify  where  the  databases  are
          stored.  The default directory is <config$_PATH_OVERVIEWDIR>.

HISTORY
     Written  by  Rob  Robertson  <rob@violet.berkeley.edu>  and   Rich   $alz
     <rsalz@uunet.uu.net>  for  InterNetNews.   This  is  revision  1.9, dated
     1996/10/29.

SEE ALSO
     expireover(8) ,     news.daily(8) ,     newsfeeds(5) ,      newsoverview(5),
     newsoverview(8).