Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!think!ames!sun-barr!lll-winken!cheers!cogent!doug
From: doug@cogent.UUCP (Doug Perlich)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: cron not always working
Keywords: cron, expire
Message-ID: <620@cogent.UUCP>
Date: 17 Nov 89 20:10:30 GMT
Reply-To: doug@cogent.UUCP (Doug Perlich)
Organization: Cogent Software Solutions, Inc.
Lines: 25

I have an odd problem maybe someone out there can help me with.
I believe this is the correct newsgroup.

I inherited the job of taking care of the news here and I'm having
problems with the expire program or cron, I'm not sure which.
The previous news administrator left a cronfile for news as follows:
	0 1 * * * /usr/lib/news/expire -r -I -e 999999 | cat -v | mail news
	0 3 * * * /usr/lib/news/expire -e 4 -E 21 | cat -v | mail news

We are fairly short on disk space so we can really only keep 4 days worth
of news (the second line).  I don't really understand the first line,
it's supposed to rebuild the history file, right?  Does that really
need to be done every night.  If I take the first line out the second
line will do NOTHING!, at least our news articles don't expire without
the first line.  That's my first question, why is the first line
needed at all.

My second problem.  I must be dreaming or something but it appears that cron
will execute these commands fine for a few days, then it seems to just quit
doing the first line.  The cron log quits showing two expires and only shows
one and our news starts to fill up again.  AAAAaaaaarrgh!

I've looked at the doc's for expire and cron and can't figure this out!
HELP!
-Doug
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