NewsStats (c) 2010-2013, 2025 Thomas Hochstein <thh@thh.name>
NewsStats is a software package for gathering statistical data live
from a Usenet feed and subsequent examination.
This script package is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation.
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What's that?
There's a multitude of tools for the statistical examination of
newsgroups: number of postings per month or per person, longest
threads, and so on (see <https://th-h.de/net/usenet/stats/>
[German language] for an incomplete list). Most of them use a per-
newsgroup approach while NewsStats is hierarchy oriented.
NewsStats will accumulate data from a live INN feed, allowing you
to process the saved information later on.
Workflow
NewsStats saves overview data and complete headers of (all)
incoming postings to a (MySQL) database in real time.
That raw data will be regularly - e.g. monthly - processed to a
second set of database tables each dedicated to a certain
statistical aspect, e.g. number of postings per group and month.
Several kinds of reports can then be generated from those result
tables.
Prerequisites
NewsStats is written in Perl (5.8.x and above) and makes use of a
MySQL database, so you will need Perl, some modules, mysql and, of
course, INN.
* Perl 5.8.x with standard modules
- Cwd
- File::Basename
- Sys::Syslog
* Perl modules from CPAN
- Config::Auto
- Date::Format
- DBI
* mysql 5.0.x
* working installation of INN
Installation instructions
See INSTALL.
Documentation is in /doc, configuration in /etc, the NewsStats
module in /lib and most scripts in /bin, while /contrib has some
sample scripts that may have to be adjusted to work in your
configuration.
Getting Started
'feedlog.pl' will continuously feed raw data to your raw data
table. See the feedlog.pl man page for more information.
You can process that data via 'gatherstats.pl'; currently the
tabulation of postings per group and injection server per month is
supported. Tabulation of clients (newsreaders) is planned. See
the gatherstats.pl man page for more information.
Report generation is handled by specialised scripts for each
report type. Currently reports on the number of postings per group
and month and injection server and month are supported; you can
use 'groupstats.pl' and 'cliservstats.pl' for that. See the
groupstats.pl and cliservstats.pl man pages for more information.
Reporting Bugs
You can report bugs or feature requests to the author using the
issue tracker at <https://code.virtcomm.de/thh/newsstats/issues>.
Please have a look at the TODO list before suggesting
improvements.
Development
This program is maintained using the Git version control system at
<https://code.virtcomm.de/thh/newsstats/>.
Related projects
<http://usenet.dex.de/> is a site were data gathered via NewsStats
is used for a graphical presentation of activity in the de.*
Usenet hierarchy over the years (since 1992).
Author
Thomas Hochstein <thh@thh.name>
<https://th-h.de/>
