Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!novavax!twwells!bill
From: bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: dbz caveat
Keywords: dbz runtime
Message-ID: <1989Oct16.043012.2938@twwells.com>
Date: 16 Oct 89 04:30:12 GMT
References: <1139@svx.SV.DG.COM> <1989Sep26.223014.13868@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <9668@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us> <6512@ficc.uu.net> <9680@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us> <1989Oct14.062717.15420@twwells.com> <675@wet.UUCP>
Organization: None, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Lines: 32

In article <675@wet.UUCP> epsilon@wet.UUCP (Eric P. Scott) writes:
: In article <1989Oct14.062717.15420@twwells.com> bill@twwells.com
:       (T. William Wells) writes:
: >The Green Hills compiler, also called gcc, also works. This came with
: >Microport SysV/386 3.0e.
:
: Beat me too it.  :-)  We've been running dbz 1.5 compiled with
: Green Hills since February with no problems.  I guess it's time
: to recompile, though; INDEX_SIZE is at the default 99991 and our
: history file has 87140 records!  Any suggestions how big I
: should make it?

You can figure that the newsfeed doubles in volume every year. This
might, now, be an overestimate, but you probably won't go wrong
making that assumption. Figure how long (in years) you don't want to
be bothered with readjusting the size, take its log base two, add one,
and multiply by your current average size. Because the newsfeed flow
isn't smooth, multiply that by one plus three over your average
expiration time. (Three, you ask? An empirical constant: I've seen the
newsfeed volume double for a period that long. Your mileage will
almost certainly vary. :-)

As I recall, you need a prime number. So, you have to find some prime
number larger than the one you just computed. If you just want to
throw darts to find a prime number, you can use the "factor" program
(on Microport, anyway). Alternately, there are factoring programs on
the net. Or you can look in a table of primes, likely available in the
reference section of your local library.

---
Bill                    { uunet | novavax | ankh | sunvice } !twwells!bill
bill@twwells.com