[tin-users] Should files in ~/.tin/.news-localhost be cleared out?

[Chris Green]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 02:58:25PM +0200, Urs Janßen wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 12:18:54PM +0100, Chris Green wrote:
> > I have been looking at my incremental backups and noting what files
> > seem to use lots of space by changing frequently.
> > 
> > There seem to be lots of moderately large and frequently changing
> > files in ~/.tin/.news-localhost, currently there are 134 files in
> > there, many not changed in several years.
> 
> [tin(1)]
> ...
> | GLOBAL OPTIONS MENU AND TINRC CONFIGURABLE VARIABLES
> ...
> |   Cache NNTP overview files locally (cache_overview_files)
> |       If ON, create local copies of NNTP overview files. This can be used
> |       to  considerably  speed up accessing large groups when using a slow
> |       connection.  See also "INDEX FILES". Default is OFF.
> 
> > So, two questions:-
> > 
> >     Should there be some sort of housekeeping to clear these files out
> >     at intervals?
> 
> | INDEX FILES
> ...
> |      As indexing might take some time you may want to run tin form the sys‐
> |      tem batcher cron(1) with the ''-u'' option:
> |
> |              30 6 * * * /usr/local/bin/tin -u
> |
> |       If  you  are  low  on  local disk space you should consider to manually
> |       purge cached data for groups you are not reading anymore with something
> |       like:
> |
> |              find ${TIN_INDEX_NEWSDIR:-"${TIN_HOMEDIR:-"$HOME"}/.tin"}/.news* \
> |              -type f -name "[0-9]*.[0-9]" -atime +28 | xargs rm -f
> 
> 
> >     Would the files not be better off in /var somewhere?  Can tin be
> >     configured to do this?
> 
> | OPTIONS
> ...
> |       -I dir   Directory  in which to store newsgroup index files.
> |                Default is ${TIN_INDEX_NEWSDIR:-"${TIN_HOME‐
> |                DIR:-"$HOME"}/.tin"}/.news.   This  option has no effect if
> |                tin retrieves its index  files  via  NNTP  and cache_over‐
> |                view_files is turned off.
> 
> urs
> 
Thank you Urs, I should have read harder and further down the man
page, sorry!

-- 
Chris Green