Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!usc!apple!uokmax!servalan!rmtodd
From: rmtodd@servalan.uucp (Richard Todd)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Whence the status lines in batchlog?
Keywords: C-news
Message-ID: <1990Apr13.065144.10524@servalan.uucp>
Date: 13 Apr 90 06:51:44 GMT
References: <1990Apr12.154612.23746@caen.engin.umich.edu>
Organization: Ministry of Silly Walks
Lines: 32

stealth@caen.engin.umich.edu (Mike Pelletier) writes:

>I'm wondering:  where are the lines that sometimes appear between
>the dates in the batchlog file generated, and where does the data
>come from?  Lines like:
>b-tech  backlog 355 (queue full, no recent movement)
> ... or ...
>b-tech  backlog 282 (batches flowing)

They come from the shell script $NEWSBIN/batch/sendbatches.  The messages 
are printed only if there is a backlog of news articles listed in the
togo* files (i.e. waiting to be batched) at the end of the batching run.
Generally this only happens when it couldn't queue batches for all the
articles, either because of a full disk or because the per-site limit
on batches has been hit (C News only allows a certain number of batches
to be waiting in the UUCP queue at a time, so that downstream sites that
roll over and die don't cause your spool partition to fill up).  
As near as I can tell, there are 3 different log messages you'll find in
batchlog:
	(disk too full for batching) -- obvious, isn't it?
	(queue full, no recent movement) -- the destination has a full queue
		of batches already made sitting in its UUCP queue
	(batches flowing) -- there's still a backlog of articles that haven't
		been batched, but the destination's UUCP queue isn't full,
		so batches are moving.

>Does the lack of such a line between dates indicate that all's well, then?
Yep.  
--
Richard Todd	rmtodd@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu  rmtodd@chinet.chi.il.us
	rmtodd@servalan.uucp
Motorola Skates On Intel's Head!