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From: ewiles@netxdev.DHL.COM (Edwin Wiles)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Elm2.3 postings?
Message-ID: <5788@netxcom.DHL.COM>
Date: 7 Jun 90 23:57:49 GMT
References: <1990May29.142844.1114@dmntor.uucp> <2583@litchi.bbn.com> <93449@mamnix.as.sub.org>
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In article <93449@mamnix.as.sub.org> mam@mamnix.as.sub.org (Michael A. Meiszl) writes:
>This "posting-delay" forced some machines to expire the first parts before
>all parts arrived :-(

Yes, this is sad.

>I trained my machine to archive only complete packages. 

Well, then train it to archive the parts as they arrive.

>My expire level is a whole fortnight but please keep in mind that news take
>alot of time to reach us here in europe. So it sometimes happens that a new
>article is rejected by inews just because it is too old.

This I do not understand.  It is my understanding that expire works on the
date that the news REACHES YOUR SITE, not the date that it was posted!
Therefore, inews should NOT reject an article for being too old.

Am I mistaken on this?  I rather doubt it because we've got really short
expiration as well as frequent history file rebuilding and I DO see lots
of duplicates.  (DON'T WORRY!  Due to our hardware constraints, we can't
do anything else, so we don't forward any article that we didn't create.
We are fully aware of the potential for network news disruption if we did
forward non-locally created articles, so we don't!  With luck, this
situation will be fixed in the near future.  [New Hardware!])

>Although 10 parts are lots of traffic, I think it would be better canceling
>the old parts and doing a complete repost (on one day please).

GOOD HEAVENS NO!  Putting out the entire ELM distribution in one huge blob
would be absolutely the WORST thing you could do.  Moderators HAVE to take
into consideration the situation of the sites they feed directly.  The majority
of such sites are going to be more than a little upset at having the entire
thing dumped on them all at one time!

Take the simpler paths:

	Option A:  Increase the expiration interval on the comp.sources.unix
		   group.

		   This would allow you to keep your archiving unchanged,
		   and the rest of the network wouldn't have to choke on
		   huge blobs of posting.

	Option B:  Change the way you archive.

		   Our archiving software is written so that it grabs
		   every posting that comes across, whenever it shows
		   up, not just the completed archive.

		   This would allow you to continue expiring news at your
		   present rate, would avoid any purported problems with
		   inews rejecting old articles, and again the rest of
		   the network wouldn't have to choke on mass postings.

					Enjoy!
						Edwin.
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