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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbatt!ihnp4!ih1ap!sja
From: sja@ih1ap.UUCP (Steve Alesch)
Newsgroups: net.news.adm
Subject: Our netnews [active] file is sick!!
Message-ID: <604@ih1ap.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 21-Oct-86 11:38:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: ih1ap.604
Posted: Tue Oct 21 11:38:11 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 22-Oct-86 05:15:19 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 84
Keywords: netnews

Our netnews [active] file broke.  We sent the following message to
our local netnews admin.:

	>From jfs Thu Oct 16 12:39:23 1986
	To: ihlpa!madany
	Subject: usenet broken?
	Cc: exptools
	Status: R
	
	
	Peter,
	
	We haven't received any netnews for the last few days.
	Investigating, I looked in the ~exptools/lib/netnews/errlog file
	and found the following:
	
	 .
	 .
	Oct 16 11:48	<2047@mtgzy.UUCP>	inews: ACTIVE file too long
	Oct 16 11:48	<971@usl.UUCP>	inews: ACTIVE file too long
	Oct 16 11:48	<2451@phri.UUCP>	inews: ACTIVE file too long
	Oct 16 11:48	<762@codas.ATT.COM>	inews: ACTIVE file too long
	Oct 16 11:48	<200@mgvax.UUCP>	inews: ACTIVE file too long
	 .
	 .
	 
	Here is the wc(1) run on our active file, ~exptools/lib/netnews/active:
	
	   414   1656  11034 active
	
	Any ideas? Have we hit some static limit on an internal array in
	inews() what with the rampant proliferation of newsgroups that is
	occurring these days?
	
	Here's a what(1) and ls -l on out copy of ~exptools/lib/netnews/inews:
	/lss/exptools/lib/netnews/inews:
		inews.c	2.56	6/6/85
		ifuncs.c	2.47	6/6/85
		iextern.c	2.14	4/16/85
		control.c	2.41	6/6/85
		fullname.c	1.10	4/16/85
		pathinit.c	1.16	4/16/85
		funcs.c	2.29	6/6/85
		funcs2.c	1.12	6/6/85
		header.c	2.37	6/6/85
		ndir.c	1.8	4/26/85
		ftime.c	2.5	4/26/85
		logdir.c	1.4	4/16/85
	
	-rwsrwxr-x   2 exptools exptools   78480 Jan  1  1986 /lss/exptools/lib/netnews/inews
	
	If you have a fix for this will you send it our way?
	
	Thanks,
	
	Jesse Fred Shumway	ih1ap!jfs	510-7880

Unfortunately Mr. Madany has neither returned our E-mail or answered
his phone yet.  So I decided to live dangerously and I removed all of
the recently added news categories, misc.* and sci.*.  This allowed us
to start receiving news again, but we are losing all of the misc.* and
sci.* news.  A tail of our [errlog] shows:

Oct 21 08:26	<753@riccb.UUCP>	inews: Unknown newsgroup 'sci.physics' removed
Oct 21 08:26	<753@riccb.UUCP>	inews: No valid newsgroups found, moved to junk
Oct 21 08:28	<806@pyramid.UUCP>	inews: Unknown newsgroup 'misc.consumers' removed
Oct 21 08:28	<806@pyramid.UUCP>	inews: No valid newsgroups found, moved to junk
Oct 21 09:04	<1146@kontron.UUCP>	inews: Unknown newsgroup 'misc.misc' removed
Oct 21 09:04	<1147@kontron.UUCP>	inews: Unknown newsgroup 'misc.misc' removed

I've heard some	rumors about the net renaming  some  of	 the  news
catgories.  From what I've seen, my guess is that all of the net.*
categories are being renamed.

Anyway,	I either need a	fix to the netnews software to allow for a
larger	[active] file or some way to clean up my [active] file.	 I
would think the	netnews	software could automagically do	this,  but
if  not,  I'd appreciate a list	of the dead news groups	so I could
shorten	my [active] file and then re-activate the misc.* and sci.*
news categories.
-- 

Steve Alesch	AT&T
(312)510-7881, ...!ihnp4!ih1ap!sja