Xref: utzoo news.admin:6913 news.misc:3595 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!godiva.cis.ohio-state.edu!karl From: karl@godiva.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.misc Subject: Re: Who's Messing With The Usenet ? Message-ID: Date: 16 Sep 89 02:15:25 GMT References: <2056@avsd.UUCP> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Followup-To: news.admin Organization: OSU Lines: 49 In-reply-to: childers@avsd.UUCP's message of 15 Sep 89 19:46:49 GMT childers@avsd.UUCP (Richard Childers) writes: I've been noticing a lot of duplicate articles recently. Richard, truly I mean no disrespect, but I think you've been spending too much time around alt.conspiracy. I began to smell a rat. I think it's just news software suffering from bitrot, at your own site. avsd# grep Message-ID * ... 238:Message-ID: <37058@conexch.UUCP> 239:Message-ID: <11519@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> 240:Message-ID: <37058@conexch.UUCP> 241:Message-ID: <11519@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> Ah, we have some duplicate articles, two out of the last three ... Stop right there. If your news system is letting in articles with identical Message-ID's, then there is braindeath in rnews' ability to poke around in your history file. That "can't happen" when things are running properly. Now, if you were to pull those lines out and check them for invisible control characters, and found differences...well, then perhaps you'd have a case for paranoia. But up to this point, you've just got a problem with your history file. Try expire -r and wait a week. I, for one, have seen relatively little in the way of duplicated stuff, even the items coming from the reputedly-corrupt `tropix' system. Just as a data point against which to compare, I keep a whole lot of news around (290Mbytes), and alt.bbs ends with these Message-ID's: 796:Message-ID: <533@sud509.RAY.COM> 797:Message-ID: <534@sud509.RAY.COM> 798:Message-ID: <537@sud509.RAY.COM> 799:Message-ID: <9626@venera.isi.edu> 800:Message-ID: <935C18IO029@NCSUVM> 801:Message-ID: <37058@conexch.UUCP> 802:Message-ID: <11519@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> 803:Message-ID: <89257.213434JTW106@PSUVM.BITNET> 804:Message-ID: <10349@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> 805:Message-ID: <1668@ns.network.com> 808:Message-ID: <1652@psuhcx.psu.edu> No dups, and I have both of the articles for which you got dups. --Karl