Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!genat!maccs!dan
From: dan@maccs.UUCP (Dan Trottier)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.sysadmin,news.software.b
Subject: Re: Help- expire problem
Message-ID: <822@maccs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 23-Oct-87 01:17:44 EST
Article-I.D.: maccs.822
Posted: Fri Oct 23 01:17:44 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Oct-87 10:36:19 EST
References: <170@bnl.ARPA>
Reply-To: dan@maccs.UUCP (Dan Trottier)
Organization: DCSS, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Lines: 48
Xref: mnetor news.admin:1229 news.sysadmin:422 news.software.b:902

In article <170@bnl.ARPA> abrams@bnl.UUCP (Karl L. Abrams) writes:
>
>	I have finally gotten around to installing version 2.11 of news,
>and find that expire seems to be doing funny things to the history file.
>When an article is due to expire, it is removed from the spool, but its
>entry in history is only partially removed.  For example, before expire:
>
><1906@arthur.cs.purdue.edu>	Sep 18 00:13	news.announce.newusers/63 
><1907@arthur.cs.purdue.edu>	Sep 18 00:13	news.misc/693 news.config/222 
><1908@arthur.cs.purdue.edu>	Sep 18 00:13	news.admin/799 news.announce.newusers/64 
>
>and after expire runs:
>
><1906@arthur.cs.purdue.edu>	Sep 18 00:13	
><1907@arthur.cs.purdue.edu>	Sep 18 00:13	
><1908@arthur.cs.purdue.edu>	Sep 18 00:13	
>
>All articles older than 14 days have this done to them, and the history file
>is growing longer every day.
>	We are running Ultrix2.0 on a VAX780, and I know of another site,
>BSD 4.3, on which the same thing is happening.

I too have experienced this kind of problem among others. To remedie this
situation we try to rebuild the history files each week with expire -r.
I say try because the result of the rebuild is an error message saying
that my active file is corrupt and the nhist* files are left lying around.
As far as I can tell the nhist* files are ok!

We often see messages such as "/comp/sys/ibm/pc/1234  does not exist" in
the expire log file. After checking the file refered to by the message is
indeed there and readable (to the world). The path given "/comp/..." seems
strange, shouldn't it be "/usr/spool/news/comp/..."?!?

We are running on a VAX 11/780 with 4.3bsd and news 2.11 patch level 8

The big boys do seem to helpfull on this one and who can blame them. I
think this is an obvious configuration problem but I'll be damned if I
can track it down.

If anyone out there has any ideas I sure would like to hear them.



-- 
Dan Trottier                  | ...!uunet!mnetor!maccs!dan
DCSS, McMaster University     | ...!utzoo!lsuc!maccs!dan 
Hamilton Ontario Canada       | dan@mcmaster.BITNET
L8S-4K1                       | Tel: (416) 525-9140 ext:3444