Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!pacbell.com!ames!vsi1!teda!mikel
From: mikel@teda.UUCP (Mikel Lechner)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Program to remove articles that have been stuck in some backwater
Message-ID: <21191@teda.UUCP>
Date: 23 Feb 91 08:02:39 GMT
References: <1991Feb22.005734.4347@tmsoft.uucp>
Lines: 33

mason@tmsoft.uucp (Dave Mason) writes:

># This uses the libraries that come with C news, so B news sites may
># have to do a lot of hacking to make it work.

># There has recently (always?) been a problem of the odd site that has
># really bad news connections and eventually passes on news that is so
># old that the Message-ID's are gone from everyone's history file.

># This irritated me enough today that I did something about it.

># This program is to nuke those old articles.

Actually, this is not a problem in Bnews.  At least Bnews 2.11.19
(what I run here) trashes these old articles.  By default any article
with a posting date over 4 weeks old gets dumped into "junk".  In
fact, since I don't have the disk space for 4 weeks of history I have
reduced this number to 2 weeks.

Since Bnews junks these articles, the old news checks in, but they don't
check out.  In the worst case, they traverse one hop.  Cnews really
needs to be fixed to similarly trash these absurdly old articles.

Even in the backwaters of UUCP land (as we are), news rarely takes more
than a few days to reach us.  Even then, we only have disk space for
a few days of news.  So anything over two weeks old is almost certainly
a mistake.

-- 
Mikel Lechner			UUCP:  teda!mikel
Teradyne EDA, Inc.
5155 Old Ironsides Drive	| If you explain so clearly that nobody
Santa Clara, Ca 95054		| can misunderstand, somebody will.