Archive-Name - The moderators of most sources groups assign an official Archive-Name to each article that gets submitted to the net. In this manner, each file has a "new-login" or "elm/part06" type of format. For multi-part postings, a subdirectory is created (as indicated in the elm example) to hold the separate "parts". This format is used by many large archive sites because it is easier for retrieval via mail request software such as netlib and the filenames give hints as to what the software is.
Volume-Issue - Software sent via most moderated groups have an assigned Volume and Issue number. This allows the moderators to track and reference the individual items that have been posted to the group. Each individual article is given an "Issue" number. The Issues are grouped together into a "Volume". There are roughly 100 articles in each Volume but this is an arbitrary split totally up to the moderator. This format is extremely useful when the software archives are cataloged. It makes searching of the files quicker and verification of complete volumes easier. This archive format is recommended for any site that will be doing massive searches of the individual volumes since it keeps the quadratic nature of directory searches from making your life miserable.
Article Number - The news software stores the articles locally by naming the news article by a number generated on every site. The Article Number ordering is unique to each site. If an Article Number archive is requested (or required by the newsgroup), the news article file is copied to the directory specified in the archive configuration file. The name of the archived article will match the original name generated by the news software.
By means of a configuration file (see rkive(5)), the archive administrator is able to control how archiving is performed. The administrator can specify on a per newsgroup basis:
o The type of the archiving, such as Volume-Issue
Archive-Name, or Article Number archiving,
o Where the newsgroup archive is to be stored on disk,
o The location of log file for the newsgroup,
o The format of the logfile records,
o The location of index file for the newsgroup,
o The format of the index file records,
o A list of users to be sent mail when an article is archived,
o The owner/group and modes of each archived member, and
o Whether the archived members should be compressed or not.
This program is normally started from cron on a daily basis. Archiving
of newly arrived software is only done once for each file. If rkive
is started daily, the posted sources are placed into the sources archive
the first day the software arrives on the machine instead of having to
wait for expire -a to run.