Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!genrad!panda!enmasse!rclex!walt
From: walt@rclex.UUCP (Walter L. Weber)
Newsgroups: net.news.adm
Subject: Need help with 2.10.3 expire
Message-ID: <750@rclex.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-May-86 16:53:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: rclex.750
Posted: Thu May  1 16:53:33 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 4-May-86 05:37:56 EDT
Organization: Ridge Computers (Eastern Region), Lexington, MA
Lines: 26
Keywords: expire

Today I noticed a number of articles which arrived from "Unknown@hplabs.UUCP"
had locked up my 2.10.3 rnews.  All articles had multiple article id's in the
"Message-Id:" field and a linecount of 0 in "Lines:".

After getting my system cleaned up I thought I would go through and expire
the garbage articles, and FOOLISHLY did not back up the news directory before
kicking off "expire -v7 -e0 -I -f Unknown@hplabs.UUCP >&RESULTS".

I discovered that ALL of the articles on my system have been removed.  My
assumption was that the above command would "expire articles older than 0 days,
independant of expiration dates in the posting, only from the specified user,
in all newsgroups"; it instead expired every article I had in the system,
regardless of the author.

My questions are:

   1) what was happening with the articles from "...!hplabs!Unknown"?
   2) does anyone have a good explanation of the functional use of the flags
      to expire?  I have either mis-understood the use of "-f somebody@where"
      or there is a bug in expire.
   3) If the articles are truly junk, what would be the proper corrective
      action to take?
-- 
Walt Weber         UUCP:  {harvard,ll-xn}!rclex!walt
Ridge Computers
Lexington, Mass.