[leafnode-list] Re: Spool permissions in leafnode-2

[Adam Funk]

On 2009-04-08, Matthias Andree wrote:

> Leafnode-1 and -2 currently use roughly the same spool format:
> Assuming an instact spool, each article has at least two links, one in the  
> message.id/NNN/ (*) directory, and one in the news/group/ directories (or  
> more if an article is cross-posted to multiple groups you're subscribed  
> to).
>
> texpire works in two phases. Phase 1 will look at when the threads in a  
> particular newsgroup were last read and unlink those links from the  
> news/group/ directories that are past expiry date for the group. After  
> that, in phase 2, it will traverse the message.id/ directories and unlink  
> all files that have just one link.
>
> Since the link count is unreliable with a world-readable newsspool:  
> leafnode-2 does not make these directories or articles world-readable and  
> continues to use the link count.
>
> Leafnode-1 was designed to offer a traditional (i. e. world-readable)  
> spool and cannot use the link count. Instead, it records the Message-IDs  
> of articles it kept during the 1st phase, creating up to 1,000 files named  
> message.id/NNN/mids - this is the "tracks the seen Message-IDs" part that  
> you quoted - and these "mids" files get reused in phase 2. The IDs listed  
> in these "mids" files are protected from expiry, the other files are  
> removed. This security fix is in place since 1.9.52 which was released 5  
> years and 5 days ago.

I guess using the "mids" files is a lot slower than relying on the
link count.  Thanks for the explanation.