Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!kuhub.cc.ukans.edu!anu-news!list From: munnari!csc.anu.oz.au!gih900@UUNET.UU.NET (Geoff Huston) Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news Subject: RE: NEWS.ITEM file going bad Message-ID: <8910122231.AA19492@uunet.uu.net> Date: 13 Oct 89 13:21:05 GMT Sender: ANU-NEWS Discussion Reply-To: Geoff Huston Lines: 25 X-cc: GIH900@uunet.UU.NET >Our news.item file just went bad; when news is started one gets >a RMS error message about the REF field being invalid and some >large number. > >Unfortunately it turns out that our news stuff has been on a disk >that wasn't being backed up every day so the best we can do >is get back a .item file from a few days ago. > >It would be nice if there were some way to tell news to build >an item file by scanning the files in the message directories. >Has anyone done (or interested in doing) something like this? Oddly enough the same type of situation happened here a month ago. Yes, you can rebuild the item file... NEWS> ADD FILE NEWS_DEVICE:[000000...]*.ITM/RETRY Just be warned that this may take all day (and even much of the night). But it does get the stuff back into the file. The dates and sequence numbers are reset, which means that all the users will see the same stuff again (which is not a good thing), but I'm not sure I have the time to write a better restoration routine at the moment. Geoff Huston