🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <84kr0a$6u9$1@hek.netix.org.uk>, C. Newport 
<crn@NOSPAM.netunix.com> wrote:
>Y2K BUGFIX - slurp

This has been known for the last couple of years.  A search of dejanews
would have found the previous discussion and solution.

>Failure mode: slurp keeps that date/time that news was last fetched
>	in /usr/lib/news/slurp.[ISPNAME] in the format YYMMDD HHMMSS
>	A y2k bug writes this date/time as 1YYMMDD HHMMSS
>	Remote NNTP server returns '500 Bad date error'

The error is within hostfiles.c and can be corrected with the following
(it boils down to a one line change and is simply a misunderstanding of
tm_year behaviour).

--- slurp-1.10/hostfiles.c	Tue Jan 10 12:56:04 1995
+++ slurp-devel/hostfiles.c	Sun Aug 30 19:58:55 1998
@@ -166,7 +166,8 @@
 	else
 		{
 		tmtime = gmtime (&nexttime);
-		ndate = (tmtime -> tm_year * 10000) +
+		/* DG 30/8/98: tm_year can exceed two digits.... */
+		ndate = (tmtime -> tm_year %100 * 10000) + 
 			   ((tmtime -> tm_mon + 1) * 100) +
 				 tmtime -> tm_mday;
 		ntime = (tmtime -> tm_hour * 10000) +

>Solution: slurp appears to be 'no longer maintained'.

The author previously expressed an intention to release a new version to
address the above point amongst others.  There is "peer support" from
other users in the meantime.

>	Replace with suck ( available from most Linux mirrors)
>	or nntpget ( part of inn distribution from www.isc.org ).

Both of which, IIRC, use a mechanism other than NEWNEWS.  For anyone who
currently uses this method *and* multiple newsfeeds this will (a)
require a bit of re-configuration work and (b) make collection slightly
slower in theory.

>Quick hack: Use an editor to snip off the offending '1' after
>	each usage of slurp or use a script to do this.

Yuck.  Fix it properly!

Dan

-- 
Dan Glover (dan@dangl.demon.co.uk)
Today's Excuse:
  The monitor needs another box of pixels.