overview terminology

[Jeffrey M. Vinocur]

On Fri, 14 Jun 2002, Wim Lewis wrote:

> On Friday, June 14, 2002, at 12:31  PM, Russell S. Ireland wrote:
> >
> > "MAKEDBZ(8)
> > 	Makedbz rebuilds dbz(3) database."
> >
> > So what is the actual datbase?  The history file?  The overview 
> > directory structure?
> 
> The DBZ database is an index file which makes it faster to find records 
> in the history file. 

Right.  That is, makedbz causes db/history.{dir,hash,index} to be
recreated from db/history.


> > 	"WARNING: If you're trying to rebuild the overview
> >        database, be sure to delete or zero out the existing
> >        database before you start [....]"
> >
> > Again, the use of "database" seems ambiguous.  

Well, "overview database" is not ambiguous -- it's *everything* related to 
overview.  (You're right, in the context of history the term "database" 
can be confusing.)


> > do I need to run makedbz AND makehistory to get a current history and
> > overview?  Or is makehistory -O -F -f history.n sufficient?
> 
> Yes, I think you need to run makedbz as well. 

Right.  makehistory first to generate db/history from the actual 
article spool, and then makedbz to generate db/history.* from the 
history file.

Except I think in 2.4 makehistory runs makedbz itself.  Anyway, the 
takehome lesson is that if you need to rebuild, delete all of the 
history* files and run makedbz.  If you only have "history" afterwards, 
you need to run makedbz.

By the way, if you're using makehistory on 2.3.x, you're best off being 
sure it's 2.3.3 or later.


-- 
Jeffrey M. Vinocur
jeff at litech.org