Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!casbah.acns.nwu.edu!eecs.nwu.edu!phil
From: phil@eecs.nwu.edu (William LeFebvre)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: C news problem:  spacefor script
Message-ID: <1991Mar6.234048.8544@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
Date: 6 Mar 91 23:40:48 GMT
References: <1991Mar6.153527.10070@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> <1991Mar6.213302.17283@zoo.toronto.edu>
Sender: news@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Mr. News)
Reply-To: phil@eecs.nwu.edu (William LeFebvre)
Organization: Northwestern University
Lines: 41
Nntp-Posting-Host: pex.eecs.nwu.edu

In article <1991Mar6.213302.17283@zoo.toronto.edu>, henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
|> In article <1991Mar6.153527.10070@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> phil@eecs.nwu.edu (William LeFebvre) writes:
|> >Some times, but not all the time, when uuxqt runs rnews on an incoming batch,
|> >the script "spacefor" as invoked by rnews does not write anything to
|> >standard output....
|> 
|> I've seen things like this before, although not in the C News context.
|> Some resource is being exhausted, and spacefor is failing to run.

This is a possibility on this machine, since it is typically supporting
more users and virtual memory than it should.  However, it was doing
this at a time when the machine was not being stressed.  I have since
added debugging to (attempt to) capture stderr on certain command lines.
This has turned up nothing.  Is there any way to capture stderr for the
entire shell script?

|> A strong possibility is that you're exceeding the limit on the number
|> of processes a given userid can have running.

Not likely.

|> Exhaustion of swap space is another idea.

Much more likely.  I didn't explicitly check for that, but there were
times when I saw this that the machine was not overloaded.

|> Also of note is that some very old uuxqts were sloppy
|> about closing file descriptors and eventually ran out.

A HA!  This is a very plausible explanation.  I will look at that, too.

Someone has suggested via email that I look at the C News extension
package.  This includes (among other things) C replcaements for rnews
and spacefor.  I will try at least the spacefor replacement and see if
that fixes it.  In the meantime I have merely disabled the check.

		William LeFebvre
		Computing Facilities Manager and Analyst
		Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
		Northwestern University
		<phil@eecs.nwu.edu>