Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: CNews expire
Message-ID: <1991Jan31.171148.20634@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1991Jan30.114829.12010@vision.uucp>
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 1991 17:11:48 GMT

In article <1991Jan30.114829.12010@vision.uucp> chris@vision.UUCP (Chris Davies) writes:
>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	-
>
>The upper bound rule means that the two newsgroup-specific alt lines are
>ignored.

I think you have a misunderstanding here.  The /bounds/ line is doing
nothing of the sort.  What *does* render the newsgroup-specific alt lines
useless is that you've got a line covering all of alt preceding them.
Please reread the expire manpage, notably this part:

    The first line of the control file which applies to a given article is
    used to control its expiry.

>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?

Seven (and an eighth probably imminent).  You should probably try to get
a more up-to-date copy.

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

Well, we don't create groups in response to checkgroups.  However, we do
do it for newgroup.  Various people have posted mods to this, and something
"official" will probably be along when we find time.  We rate this as low
priority, since creation of a group is a relatively-harmless nuisance.
-- 
If the Space Shuttle was the answer,   | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
what was the question?                 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry