Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-sdd!artech!randy
From: randy@artech.UUCP (Randy Burt)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: B news 2.11 PL 18 - bug in installation?
Summary: Bug in makeactive.sh
Keywords: bug,install
Message-ID: <173@artech.UUCP>
Date: 13 Oct 89 15:21:27 GMT
References: <8895@galbp.LBP.HARRIS.COM>
Reply-To: hp-sdd!artech.UUCP!randy (Randy Burt)
Organization: Applied Remote Tech., San Diego
Lines: 32

mhw@wittsend.lbp.harris.com (Michael H. Warfield) writes:
>	I recently upgraded some systems to 2.11 PL 18 and everything worked
> great.  I then installed 2.11 PL 18 on some new systems and immediately had
> problems.  I started getting "ng bad size" messages from inews and the
> article numbers started their weird dance as if I had a pre-PL18 active
> file and hadn't run "make update".  What I discovered is that if you had
> an active file, "make update" will correctly update the format of the file
> for you.  With a new installation, "make update" does not find an existing
> active file.  He then generates a new active file for you,
> IN THE WRONG FORMAT!

I just installed news earlier this week and ran into the same problem.
It appears to be a bug in the file makeactive.sh.  In the following
lines, the active numbers in the sed line are five digits long when
they should be seven:

: if active file is empty, create it
if test ! -s $LIBDIR/active
then
	sed 's/[ 	].*/ 00000 00001/' /tmp/$$groups > $LIBDIR/active
	cat <<'E_O_F' >>$LIBDIR/active
control 0000000 0000000
junk 0000000 0000000
E_O_F
	set - group 0 1
else

I am new to the net, and did not know who to send the bug to.  Note
that control and junk are correct.

Randy Burt
hp-sdd!artech!randy