trn Configuration

trn is the successor to an older newsreader, too, namely rn (which means read news). The ``t'' in its name stands for ``threaded''. It was written by Wayne Davidson.

Unlike tin, trn has no provision for generating its threading database at run-time. Instead, it uses those prepared by a program called mthreads that has to be invoked regularly from cron to update the index files.

Not running mthreads, however, doesn't mean you cannot access new articles, it only means you will have all those ``Novell buys out Linix!!'' articles scattered across your article selection menu, instead of a single thread you may easily skip.

To turn on threading for particular newsgroups, mthreads is invoked with the list of newsgroups on the command line. The list is made up in exactly the same fashion as the one in the sys file:

           mthreads comp,rec,!rec.games.go

will enable threading for all of comp and rec, except for rec.games.go (people who play Go don't need fancy threads). After that, you simply invoke it without any option at all to make it thread any newly arrived articles. Threading of all groups found in your active file can be turned on by invoking mthreads with a group list of all.

If you're receiving news during the night, you will customarily run mthreads once in the morning, but you can also to do so more frequently if needed. Sites that have very heavy traffic may want to run mthreads in daemon mode. When it is started at boot time using the -d option, it puts itself in the background, and wakes up every 10-minutes to check if there are any newly-arrived articles, and threads them. To run mthreads in daemon mode, put the following line in your rc.news script:

           /usr/local/bin/rn/mthreads -deav

The -a option makes mthread automatically turn on threading for new groups as they are created; -v enables verbose log messages to mthreads' log file, mt.log in the directory where you have trn installed.

Old articles no longer available must be removed from the index files regularly. By default, only articles whose number is below the low water mark will be removed. Articles above this number who have been expired nevertheless (because the oldest article has been assigned an long expiry date by an Expires: header field) may be removed by giving mthreads the -e option to force an ``enhanced'' expiry run. When mthreads is running in daemon mode, the -e option makes it put in such an enhanced expiry run once a day, shortly after midnight.