Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!faline!thumper!ulysses!ucbvax!unisoft!gethen!farren
From: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Patch to limit nightly batches
Message-ID: <678@gethen.UUCP>
Date: 11 Feb 88 16:38:41 GMT
References: <669@gethen.UUCP> <404@dmk3b1.UUCP>
Reply-To: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Organization: There's Unix there in Oakland
Lines: 33

In article <404@dmk3b1.UUCP> dmk@dmk3b1.UUCP (David Keaton) writes:
>In article <669@gethen.UUCP> farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren) writes:
>>There has been an additional flag added to the command line syntax of
>>sendbatch.  This flag, -l, will invoke the limiting function.
>
>Don't use sendbatch -l if you're close to running out of spool space
>YOURSELF.  If that's the case you want to flush everything out of your
>system as fast as possible.

Perhaps not.  If your downstream sites are being seriously flummoxed
because you're overloading THEIR directories, then you might not want
to flush yourself onto them so quickly. 

>Also, don't use sendbatch -l when transmitting to a site that has as
>much disk space as you do or more. Otherwise you'll cause propagation
>delays that aren't necessary.

This is a drawback to the scheme, but I believe the problems caused by
big fluctuations in the volume of news are greater than the propagation
delay problems.  Articles should still go out in the order received, 
just not all of them at once.  With normal flow, the limiting function
should never be invoked, and if it is invoked, then the delays should
be fairly minimal.

I would like to ask for feedback from people who are using sendbatch -l,
once it has been in place long enough to see if it has some of the
desired effect.  It's always nice to get data to support your theories :-)

-- 
Michael J. Farren             | "INVESTIGATE your point of view, don't just 
{ucbvax, uunet, hoptoad}!     | dogmatize it!  Reflect on it and re-evaluate
        unisoft!gethen!farren | it.  You may want to change your mind someday."
gethen!farren@lll-winken.llnl.gov ----- Tom Reingold, from alt.flame