expire.ctl(5)
NAME
expire.ctl - control file for Usenet article expiration
DESCRIPTION
The file /etc/news/expire.ctl is the default control file for the expire(8) program, which reads it at start-up. Blank lines and lines beginning with a number sign (``#'') are ignored. All other lines should be in one of two formats. The first format specifies how long to keep a record of fully-expired articles. This is useful when a newsfeed intermittently offers older news that is not kept around very long. (The case of very old news is handled by the ``-c'' flag of innd(8).) There should only be one line in this format, which looks like this: /remember/:days Where days is a floating-point number that specifies the upper limit to remember a Message-ID, even if the article has already expired. (It does not affect article expirations.) Most of the lines in the file will consist of five colon-separated fields, as follows: pattern:modflag:keep:default:purge The pattern field is a list of wildmat(3)-style patterns, separated by commas. This field specifies the newsgroups to which the line is applied. Note that the file is interpreted in order, so that the last line that matches will be used. This means that general patterns (like a single asterisk to set the defaults) should appear before specific group specifications. The modflag field can be used to further limit newsgroups to which the line applies, and should be chosen from the following set: M Only moderated groups U Only unmoderated groups A All groups The next three fields are used to determine how long an article should be kept. Each field should be either a number of days (fractions like ``8.5'' are allowed) or the word ``never.'' The most common use is to specify the default value for how long an article should be kept. The first and third fields --- keep and purge --- specify the boundaries within which an Expires header will be honored. They are ignored if an article has no Expires header. The fields are specified in the file as ``lower-bound default upper-bound,'' and they are explained in this order. Since most articles do not have explicit expiration dates, however, the second field tends to be the most important one. The keep field specifies how many days an article should be kept before it will be removed. No article in the newsgroup will be removed if it has been filed for less then keep days, regardless of any expiration date. If this field is the word ``never'' then an article cannot have been kept for enough days so it will never be expired. The default field specifies how long to keep an article if no Expires header is present. If this field is the word ``never'' then articles without explicit expiration dates will never be expired. The purge field specifies the upper bound on how long an article can be kept. No article will be kept longer then the number of days specified by this field. All articles will be removed after then have been kept for purge days. If purge is the word ``never'' then the article will never be deleted. It is often useful to honor the expiration headers in articles, especially those in moderated groups. To do this, set keep to zero, default to whatever value you wish, and purge to never. To ignore any Expires header, set all three fields to the same value. There must be exactly one line with a pattern of ``*'' and a modflags of ``A'' --- this matches all groups and is used to set the expiration default. It should be the first expiration line. For example, ## How long to keep expired history /remember/:5 ## Most things stay for two weeks *:A:14:14:14 ## Believe expiration dates in moderated groups, up to six weeks *:M:1:30:42 ## Keep local stuff for a long time foo.*:A:30:30:30
HISTORY
Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews. This is revision 1.15, dated 1996/10/29.
SEE ALSO
expire(8), wildmat(3). EXPIRE.CTL(5)
Opportunity
Personal Opportunity - Free software gives you access to billions of dollars of software at no cost. Use this software for your business, personal use or to develop a profitable skill. Access to source code provides access to a level of capabilities/information that companies protect though copyrights. Open source is a core component of the Internet and it is available to you. Leverage the billions of dollars in resources and capabilities to build a career, establish a business or change the world. The potential is endless for those who understand the opportunity.
Business Opportunity - Goldman Sachs, IBM and countless large corporations are leveraging open source to reduce costs, develop products and increase their bottom lines. Learn what these companies know about open source and how open source can give you the advantage.
Free Software
Free Software provides computer programs and capabilities at no cost but more importantly, it provides the freedom to run, edit, contribute to, and share the software. The importance of free software is a matter of access, not price. Software at no cost is a benefit but ownership rights to the software and source code is far more significant.
Free Office Software - The Libre Office suite provides top desktop productivity tools for free. This includes, a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation engine, drawing and flowcharting, database and math applications. Libre Office is available for Linux or Windows.
Free Books
The Free Books Library is a collection of thousands of the most popular public domain books in an online readable format. The collection includes great classical literature and more recent works where the U.S. copyright has expired. These books are yours to read and use without restrictions.
Source Code - Want to change a program or know how it works? Open Source provides the source code for its programs so that anyone can use, modify or learn how to write those programs themselves. Visit the GNU source code repositories to download the source.
Education
Study at Harvard, Stanford or MIT - Open edX provides free online courses from Harvard, MIT, Columbia, UC Berkeley and other top Universities. Hundreds of courses for almost all major subjects and course levels. Open edx also offers some paid courses and selected certifications.
Linux Manual Pages - A man or manual page is a form of software documentation found on Linux/Unix operating systems. Topics covered include computer programs (including library and system calls), formal standards and conventions, and even abstract concepts.
