@(#) $Header: README,v 1.16 96/12/26 23:53:32 leres Exp $ (LBL)

DEXPIRE 3.3
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Network Research Group
dexpire@ee.lbl.gov
ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/dexpire.tar.Z

This is the dexpire package. Dexpire is a replacement netnews expire
program. Most expire programs have you specify how long you want to
keep articles. Since netnews volume is constantly increasing, this
approach requires constant configuration file fiddling to avoid running
out of disk space. Also, when netnews volume slacks off (e.g. during
long holidays), traditional expires blindly free up too much space.

Dexpire dynamically determines how long to keep articles. You specify
the relative importance of hierarchies/newsgroups and how much free
space you'd like and it does the rest. This makes it easy to run on the
edge; articles are kept as long as possible without running out of disk
space.

Another advantage of dexpire is that it runs considerably faster than
traditional expires. It only looks the active file and spool
directories; run time is a function of the number articles deleted.
Since the history file rebuild is a seperate process, you have the
option of doing this less frequently (e.g. once a week).

This package has been tested with C News and INN. (It's been awhile
since I've seen a C News system so the scripts supplied for it may need
a little work.)

Problems, bugs, questions, desirable enhancements, source code
contributions, etc., should be sent to the email address
"dexpire@ee.lbl.gov".

 - Craig Leres