[leafnode-list] Re: Should touch_newsgroup touch the first or last article in the group?

[Adam Funk]

On 2006-05-10, Mark Brown <broonie at sirena.org.uk> wrote:
> On Wed, May 10, 2006 at 01:28:05PM +0100, Adam Funk wrote:
>> I think that `touch_newsgroup alt.foo.bar` updates the access time of
>> the first article in /var/spool/news/alt/foo/bar/ and that this keeps
>> texpire from deleting old articles in that directory (unless the -f
>> option is added).
>
>> Is this correct?  
>
> No.  touch_newsgroup connects to Leafnode via NNTP and reads the first
> article the server offers which ought to cause Leafnode to update its
> idea of when the group was last read.  How that's done is up to
> Leafnode.

Oops, I did read /usr/bin/touch_newsgroup, then I did some experiments
with that command and stat, but I left the intermediate stages out of
my description.

Now I think that for leafnode "the first article the server offers" is
the first article in the group -- is that correct?


> Note that touch_newsgroup is part of the Debian package and is not
> included in Leafnode itself.  I believe it shouldn't be needed with
> current Leafnode versions due to improvements in the way it decides if
> groups are unread.

Interesting.  (I'll read some more of the documentation.)