Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!wuarchive!m.cs.uiuc.edu!schwager
From: schwager@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Michael Schwager)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Problems with expire in CNews
Message-ID: <1991Apr25.161229.18843@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 25 Apr 91 16:12:29 GMT
References: <1991Apr23.170825.8303@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <1991Apr23.212341.5125@zoo.toronto.edu> <1991Apr24.160705.29971@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <1991Apr24.180649.14798@zoo.toronto.edu> <1991Apr25.001832.19898@s1.msi.umn.edu>
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Lines: 40

molenda@s1.msi.umn.edu (Jason Molenda) writes:

>henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:

>> An earlier line which
>>also covers that group will cause its line to be ignored.  

>I've known about this for a long time and I know it is documented and
>everything, but am I the only person who thinks it's a huge hole inviting
>mistakes by new and old sysadmins alike?

Indeed, if I may make a comment regarding News (we ran notes up until
December of last year):

Seems like there are all kinds of pitfalls, troubles, and caveats one can
enter when bringing News up.  For example, one must make more inodes than
the default on our News partitions, because News stores every blasted
article in a seperate file.  I'm guessing that that's the way it is
elsewhere, too.  News is so big and cantankerous, that it's so dang
confusing to figure out problems.  It's taken me a few months to get it
down, and even now (as my previous problem will attest), I'm still
confused.  Like, what all does the history file do?  Which programs use it?
(I know, relaynews and expire use it... any others?  Don't answer that.
It's rhetorical.)

I had a huge problem one time, where I was sending some files over to our
machine from another machine and for some reason, they didn't get put on
disk, but they did get entered into our history file (mea culpa- I didn't
document the whole sad scene; I was too busy being frustrated).  Anyway, I
have a good idea of how the whole mass fits together now, but it's taken
awhile, and I'm always nervous that another gremlin is gonna jump out of
the closet...

In a nutshell: News is big, bad, and ugly.  I would not wish upon my worst
enemy that they be forced to bring it up from scratch.
-Mike Schwager                             | Machine: Amiga 500, 3 MB RAM/30 HD
INTERNET:schwager@cs.uiuc.edu              | Bike: '83 Kawasaki KZ750 LTD
UUCP:{uunet|convex|pur-ee}!uiucdcs!schwager| Band: Poi Dog Pondering      //
BITNET:schwager@mike.cs.uiuc.edu           | Hero: Robert Bly         \\ //
University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci.| DoD: #0301                \X/Amiga