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Path: utzoo!linus!security!genrad!mit-eddie!mit-vax!eagle!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!hpda!fortune!amd70!dual!fair
From: fair@dual.UUCP (Erik E. Fair)
Newsgroups: net.bugs.uucp,net.mail,net.flame
Subject: BUG in System III UUCP (FLAME)
Message-ID: <205@dual.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Jan-84 01:04:30 EST
Article-I.D.: dual.205
Posted: Wed Jan  4 01:04:30 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Dec-83 01:13:21 EST
Organization: Dual Systems, Berkeley, CA
Lines: 38


<FLAME ON, AFTERBURNERS FULL>

	Tonight, thanks to two idiots, we lost an unknown amount of mail
and news. The first idiot is the one who filled up our /usr/spool
filesystem. The second idiot is the one who wrote uucp in such a fashion
that it can receive a file into a full filesystem, and NOT NOTICE IT!
IDIOT! IDIOT! (shouted at the top of my lungs).

<FLAME OFF, BUG REPORT ON>

	UUCICO can and will receive and acknowledge receipt of files
all the while it is writing to a full filesystem (which has no effect,
other than to lose the incoming data). The catch is that since it
doesn't notice that everything is going down /dev/rathole, it will
acknowledge and the other end will duly destroy its copy of the data
that was transferred. I have not looked at the code yet, but I can
guess what I will find. Whomever wrote the stuff for shoving incoming
data into TM* files probably forgot to check for negative returns from
`write(2)' (`Gee, I didn't know write could fail...').

	For those of you who know what it is, the old BerkNet handles this
error quite gracefully, with no loss of data. It may not be a fast network,
but it is as cheap as UUCP, MUCH more flexible, and MUCH more reliable.
In the three years that I have used the BerkNet software (first at Berkeley,
and now I maintain it at DUAL) I have NEVER lost a file. I can't say the
same for uucp. Eric Schmidt, where ever you are, take a bow.

<BUG REPORT OFF, REQUEST ON>

	Anyone who sent mail to the `dual' system in the last two days
(arguably not many people, but the primary purpose of this is to report
the bug...) should resend. 

<REQUEST OFF, IRRITATION LINGERS>

	Erik E. Fair	{ucbvax,amd70,zehntel,unisoft,onyx,its}!dual!fair
			Dual Systems Corporation, Berkeley, California