Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ames!lll-winken!indri!uakari!bin
From: bin@primate.wisc.edu (Brain in Neutral)
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
Subject: Re: Minutes ... (nntpxmit)
Message-ID: <122@uakari.primate.wisc.edu>
Date: 5 Jul 89 14:18:29 GMT
References: <714@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu>
Sender: bin@primate.wisc.edu
Reply-To: bin@primate.wisc.edu
Lines: 28

From article <714@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu>, by emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti):
| 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. 

Before booting:

	mv /etc/nntpd /etc/nntpd~

After you've been up for a bit:

	mv /etc/nntpd~ /etc/nntpd

Simple, effective.  It doesn't prevent the load average hike from happening,
but does at least delay it until you want it.

Paul DuBois
dubois@primate.wisc.edu