Xref: utzoo news.admin:11448 news.software.b:6354
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!mindcraft.com!karish
From: karish@mindcraft.com (Chuck Karish)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b
Subject: Re: Cnews expire problem... need help
Message-ID: <660596702.10086@mindcraft.com>
Date: 7 Dec 90 19:05:01 GMT
References: <1990Dec7.130639.15803@bnr.ca>
Organization: Mindcraft, Inc.
Lines: 34

In article <1990Dec7.130639.15803@bnr.ca> janick@bnr.ca
(Janick Bergeron) writes:
>For the last few days, I keep receiving the following message from
>Cnews/expire:
>
>expire problems:
>expire: wrong number of fields in `	660190899~-...'
>
>(Note: that's a <TAB> between the '`' and the first '6')
>
>How do I locate the offending article and force its expiry ??

There are two problems to deal with:

- fixing the history file so you stop getting mail from expire
- expiring the article

#1:    sed '/^\t660190899~-/d' < history > history.fixed

#2:    Use 'grep' instead of 'sed', and look at the file name
       on the end of the line.  If the file name isn't there, it's
       already been expired.

       Alternate solution: Just leave the file there.  Put an
       entry into crontab to remove articles older than the
       maximum age in your explist file.

New question: What causes the history lines to be mangled in
the first place?  I'm getting about eight or ten of them a
month.  Is it related to having my spool disk fill up?
-- 

	Chuck Karish		karish@mindcraft.com
	Mindcraft, Inc.		(415) 323-9000