Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!axion!vision!chris
From: chris@vision.uucp (Chris Davies)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: CNews expire
Message-ID: <1991Jan30.114829.12010@vision.uucp>
Date: 30 Jan 91 11:48:29 GMT
Reply-To: chris@vision.UUCP (Chris Davies)
Organization: VisionWare Ltd., Leeds, UK
Lines: 56

Well, we've just gone over to CNews.  No major problems yet  :-)

However, as regards expiring articles, there is a problem.  Expire (as
documented somewhere) uses an upper bound for determining the expiry date of
articles.  Unfortunately this behaviour does not always seem to be the most
useful.  First, part of our "ideal" expiry list:

-->	/expired/			x	28	-
-->	/bounds/			x	0-1-21	-
-->
-->	# Keep alt.* for 7 days except the mega-high-volume groups
-->	alt				x	7	-
-->	alt.desert-shield		x	3	-
-->	alt.desert-storm		x	3	-
-->
-->	# People like to read soc.british only every few days
-->	soc				x	4	-
-->	soc.british			x	7	-
-->
-->	# Keep the disk space under some sort of control
-->	all				x	21	-

The upper bound rule means that the two newsgroup-specific alt lines are
ignored.

I don't want to change the alt lines as follows, since there is a similar
situation with about 30 comp groups and the problem would remain there too -

-->	alt,!alt.desert-shield,!alt.deset-storm		x	7	-
-->	alt.desert-shield				x	3	-
-->	alt.desert-storm				x	3	-

Changing to behaviour of expire so that it uses the lower bound for determining
the expiry date would not help, because of the entries for soc and soc.british.

(1)  Can anyone suggest a way round this?  More details on request (I hope I've
     given enough info here, tho').

The latest patchdate here is (only) 25-May-1990 (that's all that the "local"
archive server had).

(2)  How many patches have there been since then?

Finally, I don't want the default behaviour for CNews to automagically
create groups in response to newgroup/checkgroup messages from all and sundry.

(3)  Before I go messing around in -/newsbin/ctl, I'd appreciate it if anyone
     who's done this would email me (so I can get the changes just once  :-)

Many thanks,
	Chris
-- 
VISIONWARE LTD         | UK: chris@vision.uucp    JANET: chris%vision.uucp@ukc
57 Cardigan Lane       | US: chris@vware.mn.org   BANGNET: ...!ukc!vision!chris
LEEDS LS4 2LE, England | VOICE:  +44 532 788858   FAX:  +44 532 304676
-------------- "VisionWare:   The home of DOS/UNIX/X integration" -------------