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From: croft@su-safe.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: in case of news fire, break this glass
Message-ID: <382@Shasta.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 21-Apr-86 14:28:39 EST
Article-I.D.: Shasta.382
Posted: Mon Apr 21 14:28:39 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 23-Apr-86 23:11:18 EST
Sender: daemon@Shasta.ARPA
Organization: Stanford University
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From: Bill Croft <croft@su-safe.ARPA>

Brian, what has happened on diablo (at least three times) is that the
unbatcher (which is started by cron every 15 minutes) will sometimes
never exit.  Perhaps this is because it is reading a prematurely
truncated batch file in /usr/spool/news (because of the rcp hangs?)
Anyway with new incarnations showing up every 15 minutes, we have seen
situations of almost a hundred unbatcher related processes (shells,
su, unbatcher itself) just hanging around.  Of course after a few dozen
of them get going, the error log file fills up with messages that
new 'news' processes can no longer fork.

The kludgy shell file I sent out just lets me kill off all of these
guys easily.  After the next unbatcher starts up, things 'seem' to
be better.  I don't understand it, but I'd be glad to message or
call you if it happens again.  Everything's fine now...