Path: utzoo!utstat!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!rpi!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Passing on unwanted groups
Message-ID: <2422@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 13 Aug 90 14:53:18 GMT
References: <1990Aug7.143458.1770@sci.ccny.cuny.edu> <747@sci34hub.UUCP> <1990Aug9.152342.29200@zoo.toronto.edu> <1990Aug9.205409.28967@sci.ccny.cuny.edu> <15112@.la.locus.com> <1990Aug11.031724.11712@zoo.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY
Lines: 21

In article <1990Aug11.031724.11712@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:

| I cannot speak for B News expire, but C News expire does not even look to
| see whether the article exists until it's time to expire it.  And even then,
| if it's missing, C expire just says "hmph, must have been cancelled", and
| carries on.  Cancellation removes the article but does not affect the
| history file, because it's seriously painful to alter a history-file
| entry that is already in place, and it's not worth the trouble.

  Yes, this is a good design decision. There just doesn't seem to be
much to gain from doing it the hard way, and there could be some major
performance hits on a busy system.

  I confess, that when certain system get low on spool space that there
is a script I run which calculates the "time-size" product and blows
away the big old articles right now. For performance reasons this is
done brute force, since it has to happen quickly to prevent loss of
incoming information.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
       "This is your PC. This is your PC on OS/2. Any questions?"