Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!rivm!ccea3
From: ccea3@rivm.UUCP (Adri Verhoef)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: News 2.11.18 problem on Ultrix
Summary: >Subject: inews B 2.11.17 trashes articles, core dumps +FIX
Keywords: Ultrix 3.0    Xenix/68000 System III (Tandy Xenix 3.2)
Message-ID: <1462@rivm05.UUCP>
Date: 20 Sep 89 09:56:20 GMT
References: <11853@polya.Stanford.EDU>
Reply-To: ccea3@rivm05.UUCP (Adri Verhoef)
Organization: RIVM, Bilthoven, The Netherlands
Lines: 82

Joe Weening wants to reverse the bug fix of Gordon Burditt...

weening@Polya.Stanford.EDU (Joe Weening) writes:
 >After I installed patch 18 to B news 2.11 on an Ultrix 3.0 system,
 >rnews no longer succeeded in unbatching articles.  For each batch,
 >a bunch of the following messages appeared in log and errlog:
 >
 >Sep 19 13:55	news	inews: : Inbound news is garbled
 >
 >and no articles were posted.  The culprit seems to be the following
 >change in ifuncs.c.  Removing it made things work again.
 >
 >*** 1400,1402
 >  						freopen(tfilename, "r", infp);
 >! 					(void) free(cp);
 >  					return;	/* from checkbatch as if
 >
 >--- 1453,1456 -----
 >  						freopen(tfilename, "r", infp);
 >! 					setbuf(infp, (char *) NULL);
 >! 					(void) free(cp); 
 >  					return;	/* from checkbatch as if


*but* from an article that Gordon Burditt wrote:


 >From: gordon@sneaky.TANDY.COM (Gordon Burditt)
 >Newsgroups: news.software.b
 >Subject: inews B 2.11.17 trashes articles, core dumps +FIX
 >Keywords: inews
 >Message-ID: <7797@sneaky.TANDY.COM>
 >Date: 23 Feb 89 08:08:39 GMT
 >Organization: Gordon Burditt
 >Lines: 38
 >
 >Index:  B news 2.11.17 src/ifuncs.c
 >
 >Since patch 15-17 (singular intended) indicated that there would be no 
 >more official patches, I'm posting this here.
 >
 >Description:  Under at least some implementations of stdio, inews trashes 
 >	articles, generates spurious "linecount expected 55, got 287" messages 
 >	on almost every article, and core dumps occasionally due to a trashed
 >	malloc free list.
 >Repeat-by:  On Xenix/68000 System III (Tandy Xenix 3.2), feed a batch of
 >	news (compressed or not) into inews.  Observe articles with the
 >	same chunk repeated many times, core files, and linecount expected
 >	messages in the log.
 >Fix:  Tell stdio to quit using the buffer supplied for infp before free()ing
 >	it.  Apply the following patch.
 >
 >*** ifuncs.c Feb 23 01:46:00 1989
 >--- ifuncs.c.new Feb 23 01:46:13 1989
 >***************
 >*** 1398,1404
 >  					} else	/* supstitute temp file as
 >  						 * input */
 >  						freopen(tfilename, "r", infp);
 >! 					(void) free(cp);
 >  					return;	/* from checkbatch as if
 >  						 * normal article */
 >  				}
 >
 >--- 1398,1406 -----
 >  					} else	/* supstitute temp file as
 >  						 * input */
 >  						freopen(tfilename, "r", infp);
 >! 					/*quit using buffer before freeing it*/
 >! 					setbuf(infp, (char *) NULL);
 >! 					(void) free(cp); 
 >  					return;	/* from checkbatch as if
 >  						 * normal article */
 >  				}
 >

Probably both of these people stand in their right.
I haven't tested B2.11.18 yet on Uniq System V.3.0,
I'm still running B2.11.14.
--
Adri Verhoef (uunet!rivm!a3), site administrator of the
National Institute for Public Health and Environmental Protection (RIVM).