Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!um-math!emv From: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) Newsgroups: news.software.nntp Subject: Re: Minutes ... (nntpxmit) Message-ID: <714@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu> Date: 4 Jul 89 02:04:06 GMT References: <1884@papaya.bbn.com> <121@uakari.primate.wisc.edu> <1128@mailrus.cc.umich.edu> Sender: usenet@math.lsa.umich.edu Reply-To: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) Organization: University of Michigan Math Dept., Ann Arbor Lines: 26 UUCP-Path: {mailrus,umix}!um-math!emv In article <1128@mailrus.cc.umich.edu> ed@cardiology.ummc.umich.edu (Ed Anselmo) writes: >>When Ed Vielmetti was at the U of Michigan's computing center, he had mailrus >>and sharkey running nntpxmit from cron every minute. This may or may not >>still be the case; Ed's now with UM's math department. > >This is no longer the case: > >Looks like mailrus is running nntpxmit every 30 min.; sharkey once an hour. > > -- Ed Anselmo (ed@cardiology.ummc.umich.edu, mailrus!clip!ed) Running every minute out of cron, especially if you have a lot of incoming feeds, means that there's going to be a lot of activity if you go down for any amount of time and come back up again. Imagine going down for 4 hours, then getting 4 hour's feed from ten sites simultaneously in the first few minutes of going back up. Tends to push up the load average a bit, and if there's anything wrong with the workings of other important software on the system (i.e. mail) that can make it difficult to address those problems. I had thought to put something in rc.local to delay accepting news from most sites for say 30 minutes after boot; you'd have two nntp_access files, and boot with a real restrictive one which only allows a few favorite close-by sites to feed you, which you'd replace with the real one after things quieted down sufficiently. --Ed