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From: jane@tolerant.UUCP (Jane Medefesser)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: --- Multiple UUXQTs causing thrashing ---
Message-ID: <768@tolerant.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-Oct-87 11:20:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: tolerant.768
Posted: Mon Oct 19 11:20:31 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Oct-87 23:53:28 EDT
References: <173@zap.UUCP>
Organization: Slobbering Systems, Inc.
Lines: 42
Keywords: Unix, compress, LCK.XQT, thrashing
Summary: Yea, me too

In article <173@zap.UUCP>, fortin@zap.UUCP (Denis Fortin) writes:
> 	I have recently installed News 2.11 on my system (an 
> iAPX286 machine running Microport System V/AT 2.2L), and have
> arranged a full compressed newsfeed with one of my neighbors.  Everything 
> works fine except that I have noticed a few times that the unpacking of
> the news seemed to take (much) longer than usual, and on top of that,
> the response time of the system was really rotten.  A quick "ps -ef"
> informed me that no less than three UUXQTs were running on the system,
> each one with associated news-unpack, compress, etc.

Yes, I have encountered the SAME THING. Drove me nuts for a month or two. I
brain stormed this with Carl G. at pyramid and we sort of determined that
the LCK.XQT lock times out after about an hour.  

This occured at our site (Vax 780 4.2 BSD) whenver I got a "checkgroups"
control message. inews would hang or block or something at the control
message. An hour would pass. UUXQT files would be waiting. The lock would
time out and be removed. Uucp would see the UUXQT's sitting there and start
another uuxqt. *IT* would hang on "checkgroups". An hour would pass......
Then, around 7:00 am I waltz in to find the process table half full, and
the system's load average running around 12.8!!!

Since I don't have loads of time on my hands to debug the kernal, nor have
I got the time to figure out WHY checkgroups is freaking out, I backed-up
checkgroups and changed the script to have 1 executable line. "exit 0".
I have never encountered the problem since. Of course, I don't have a real
up to date "newsgroups" file either. (I update it by hand from time to
time), but I feel that it's a small price to pay under the circumstances.

Now, I feel pretty confident that I have a configuration error somewhere
that causes checkgroups to hang. (It's the ONLY control message that causes
this behavior.) If anyone can shed some light on this, I'd appreciate it.

Hope this helps...



-- 
* Not me, baby - I'm too precious * <-- ( it's only rock & roll..)

Jane Medefesser		uucp: {pyramid,mordor,oliveb,sci}!tolerant!jane
Tolerant Systems 	tele: +1 408 433 5588