🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan4.211910.14359@bony1.bony.com> stevef@bony1.bony.com (Steve Faiwiszewski) writes:
>	-rw-rw-r--  1 news      6096380 Dec 29 17:12 /var/news/history
>	-rw-rw-r--  1 news            0 Dec 28 20:00 /var/news/history.dir
>	-rw-rw-r--  1 news       399964 Dec 29 17:14 /var/news/history.pag
>
>And now they're:
>	-rw-rw-r--  1 news      3836657 Jan  4 16:09 /var/news/history
>	-rw-rw-r--  1 news            0 Jan  3 20:00 /var/news/history.dir
>	-rw-rw-r--  1 news       399964 Jan  4 16:09 /var/news/history.pag
>
>Why has this happened?  Is this a known problem?  Was it fixed in a
>later version of Cnews?  Should I bother updating to the latest?

Looks like you're using the old version of the dbz package, which had
extremely bad behavior when its hash table overflowed... as you've just
discovered.  You could enlarge the table some (by recompiling) and
cross your fingers, but a much better approach would be to upgrade
to a modern version; the modern dbz handles the situation far more
gracefully.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry

In article <1993Jan4.211910.14359@bony1.bony.com> stevef@bony1.bony.com (Steve Faiwiszewski) writes:
|Our site uses a DECstation 3100/ Ultrix 4.2 for our newsfeed, using a
|relatively stale copy of Cnews (circa July 1990).  Everything has been
|running smoothly (more or less) for a LONG LONG time.  But on about Dec 24,
|the news processing suddenly started dragging its feet.  Things were
|so bad that we couldn't keep up with our feed, and nobody could post
|anything even locally, as there was always a relaynews process hanging
|around locking the system.
|
|
|The relaynews process that gets spawned by the newsrun script spending
|most of its time in D state (disk wait).  I tried a few things to no avail:
|1) Ran expire a few times for good measure
|2) Recreated the filesystem to eliminate disk fragmentation as a factor
|
|I then recreated the history files using the mkhistory script, and
|that seems to have cured the problem.

Sounds like something corrupted your histrory files, and it wasn't 
being handled very well (of course, one can't allow for every possibility).

The reason your history files were significantly smaller is that previously,
they held the message IDs from articles that have already been expired; now,
you've only got those from articles on hand. Your history file should grow
back to it's previous size in a few weeks.

I don't think you need to worry about upgrading, unless you want to.

-- 
Gary Heston    SCI Systems, Inc.  gary@sci34hub.sci.com   site admin
The Chairman of the Board and the CFO speak for SCI. I'm neither.
"Data sheet: HSN-3000 Nuclear Event Detector. The [NED] senses the gamma
radiation pulse [from a] nuclear weapon." As if we wouldn't notice...

In article <C0Cwpx.D0p@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>Looks like you're using the old version of the dbz package, which had
>extremely bad behavior when its hash table overflowed... as you've just
>discovered.  You could enlarge the table some (by recompiling) and
>cross your fingers, but a much better approach would be to upgrade
>to a modern version; the modern dbz handles the situation far more
>gracefully.

Thanks for the response, Henry.  I'm relieved that it's at least a
known problem.  When you say I should upgrade to a modern version, are
you referring to C news, or dbz?  If dbz alone, then where can I
obtain it.  Is it still bundled with C news?

	- Steve -
-- 
Internet: stevef@bony1.bony.com   | / If you could turn on the lights \
bang : {uupsi,uunet}!bony1!stevef ||| quickly enough, you could see   ||
                                  ||| what the dark looks like...     ||
  Opinions? What opinions?        | \_________________________________/

In article <1993Jan6.181708.10404@bony1.bony.com> stevef@bony1.bony.com (Steve Faiwiszewski) writes:
>... When you say I should upgrade to a modern version, are
>you referring to C news, or dbz?  If dbz alone, then where can I
>obtain it.  Is it still bundled with C news?

I was thinking of C News, although just the dbz upgrade ought to suffice.
I don't *think* there are any dependencies that would foul this up.  Mind
you, if you're recompiling everything anyway...

I don't know, offhand, of any source for the modern dbz except C News.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry