Bug 256238 - periodic: remove obsolete news.expire
Summary: periodic: remove obsolete news.expire
Status: In Progress
Alias: None
Product: Base System
Classification: Unclassified
Component: bin (show other bugs)
Version: 13.0-STABLE
Hardware: Any Any
: --- Affects Only Me
Assignee: Robert Wing
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2021-05-29 10:00 UTC by Nils Johannsen
Modified: 2024-01-08 05:05 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
linimon: mfc-stable13?


Attachments
git commit to remove news.expire from periodic (2.40 KB, patch)
2021-05-29 10:00 UTC, Nils Johannsen
no flags Details | Diff

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Description Nils Johannsen 2021-05-29 10:00:45 UTC
Created attachment 225351 [details]
git commit to remove news.expire from periodic

Together with the initial import of 386BSD 0.1 in 1993 the daily execution of /etc/news.expire was invented (see commit 1bf9d5d9518e).
This excution was maintained throughout and transferred accordingly to periodic in 1997, resulting in daily/330.news (see e.g. commit 28dce04d1975).

But as far as I see there was nevery any /etc/news.expire existing.
I also asked several people but none was able to explain me what news.expire could be or was at any time...
Comment 1 Thierry Thomas freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2021-05-30 09:21:06 UTC
I have a server running INN, and it does not run /etc/news.expire.
The crontab entry is:

0 3 * * * /usr/local/news/bin/news.daily expireover lowmark

and this does the job.
Comment 2 Andriy Gapon freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2021-05-30 18:13:57 UTC
Maybe in the past people thought that every BSD (or Unix) machine would run a news (as in NNTP) server. E.g., a small repertoire of syslog facilities includes news as well.
But I think that we never had a news server in the base.
And I expect that all "third-party" news server have their own stuff for periodic tasks.

So, it should be fine to purge that periodic entry.
Comment 3 Robert Wing freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2021-06-03 19:34:37 UTC
https://reviews.freebsd.org/D30631
Comment 4 Nils Johannsen 2022-03-08 02:00:54 UTC
Thanks Robert for your effort. But how to proceed now with review D30631?
Comment 5 commit-hook freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2022-03-08 04:48:07 UTC
A commit in branch main references this bug:

URL: https://cgit.FreeBSD.org/src/commit/?id=901c52f13c46a755f18f008106c0384cd6fd220c

commit 901c52f13c46a755f18f008106c0384cd6fd220c
Author:     Nils Johannsen <n.johannsen@beckhoff.com>
AuthorDate: 2022-03-08 04:29:26 +0000
Commit:     Robert Wing <rew@FreeBSD.org>
CommitDate: 2022-03-08 04:37:42 +0000

    periodic: remove obsolete news.expire

    With the initial import of 386BSD 0.1 in 1993, the daily execution of
    /etc/news.expire was introduced (see commit 1bf9d5d9518e).

    In 1997, this was brought into periodic resulting in daily/330.news
    (see commit 28dce04d1975). But as far as I see, /etc/news.expire has
    never existed.

    PR:         256238
    MFC after:  1 week
    Differential Revision:  https://reviews.freebsd.org/D30631

 ObsoleteFiles.inc                           |  3 +++
 share/man/man5/periodic.conf.5              |  8 +------
 usr.sbin/periodic/etc/daily/330.news (gone) | 34 -----------------------------
 usr.sbin/periodic/etc/daily/Makefile        |  1 -
 usr.sbin/periodic/periodic.conf             |  3 ---
 5 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 45 deletions(-)
Comment 6 Mark Linimon freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2024-01-08 05:05:22 UTC
^Triage: assign to committer and set flag if possible interest in MFC.