Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!ists!yunexus!xrtll!rsnider
From: rsnider@xrtll.uucp (Richard Snider)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Expire is mangling the history database
Summary: Don't do this
Keywords: expire cnews dbz nntp
Message-ID: <1991Jan9.025423.17060@xrtll.uucp>
Date: 9 Jan 91 02:54:23 GMT
References: <1991Jan7.021551.16323@unvax.union.edu>
Reply-To: rsnider@xrtll (Richard Snider)
Organization: XRTLL - Almost Public Unix, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Lines: 33

In article <1991Jan7.021551.16323@unvax.union.edu>
   boehme@unvax.union.edu (Eric M. Boehm) writes:
>I am running cnews (patchdate 15-Dec-1990) with nntp.1.5.10 on a
>DECsystem 5000/Model 200 running Ultrix 4.1. When doexpire runs (and
>thus expire), the history database is corrupted.
>1. After expire rebuilds the history database, nntp fails on the next
>connect after only 1 article.
>2. Examining the coredump for nntpd shows that a Segmentation
>violation occurred when trying to lookup the article in the database.
>3. If I run "mkhistory" the problem goes away (that is, there are no
>more core dumps and news runs okay).

>possible explanation is that I selected dbz when building cnews but
>selected ndbm for nntpd. I also selected fast stdio for cnews. I had

I had a variant of this same problem when I compiled relaynews with 
the dbz that comes with C News and expire with the dbm that comes with
the system (Don't ask why, you don't want to know :-)

Be warned that the dbm that comes with your system is probabbly not at
all compatible with the dbz that comes with C News or any other software
when it gets down to actually accessing {.dir|.pag} files.

I suggest picking one that has everything that all the software needs to
use and sticking to it.

I also remember that copying the history database files using normal
means tends to upset some flavors of dbm in this way.

                                        Richard Snider
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