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Solution: slurp appears to be 'no longer maintained'.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

Dan Glover wrote:

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

[snipped source code fix ]

> >       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.

nntpget has a NEWNEWS option and is fully supported as part of inn.
the author of slurp seems to have vanished so I prefer to use a supported
option. It does everything that suck does and more.

> >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!
>

Agreed - the quick hack just keeps things running until you fix it
properly.

In article <851npk$4vv$1@ucsnew1.ncl.ac.uk>, "J.N. Wilford" 
<J.N.Wilford@ncl.ac.uk> wrote:

>Which brings me to my question.  Has anyone got slurp's history file
>checking to work with Inn-2.2.1's extended-dbz format?

Sorry, this got discussed in another branch of this tread which was only
posted to demon.ip.support.unix (and I'm setting follow-ups there now).
At least one set of patches has been written - I received some in
response to previous discussions - but I'm in a bit of a dilemma what to
do about distributing them.  The author didn't feel it was appropriate
to make them publicly available in view of the copyright conditions for
slurp and I think I should respect his wishes.  However there seems to
be a certain level of "need" and it could save a lot of wasted effort.

I'm not actually in a position to test with INN-2.x as this is still a
cnews zone.  I think what I should do is contact the author of the
patches and suggest that he either makes himself known or sends details
direct to those who have recently expressed an interest.

I can't help any further directly, sorry, but I'll try to get the patch
author to contact you.

Dan

-- 
Dan Glover (dan@dangl.demon.co.uk)
Today's Excuse:
  Your processor does not develop enough heat.