Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!purdue!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!hp4nl!rivm!ccea3
From: ccea3@rivm.UUCP (Adri Verhoef)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: B 2.11.17 on UNIX System V.3 broken
Keywords: rnews -U MINFREE (!SPOOLNEWS) rnews -S -p 89... Unknown empty garbled
Message-ID: <1243@rivm05.UUCP>
Date: 4 Feb 89 01:32:18 GMT
Organization: RIVM, Bilthoven, The Netherlands
Lines: 72

Low free space on the system revealed some bugs in the news software.
Some configuration facts:
	MINFREE == 5000
	SPOOLNEWS not defined
	LOCKF and READDIR defined
	The system is UNIX System V.3.0 on a VAX-630 (microVAX-II).

Free space was low (~4000) at the moment I posted an article,
after I sent it, postnews said:
inews: Out of space in /usr/spool/news. Saving for later processing.
Article posted successfully.

So far so good, it seemed.  But in the errlog file there was the message:
Feb  3 22:45	Unknown	inews: Out of space in /usr/spool/news. \
					Saving for later processing.
		^^^^^^^ (I never saw this before.  Should be the username.)
But the ability to put my username in errlog was still present, apparently,
for later on, the following entry showed up in the errlog file:
Feb  3 23:26	ccea3	inews: 8902032226d79: Inbound news is garbled

It's not the reason why I'm writing, though.


When the disk free space was still low, I tried 'rnews -U'.
The message that showed up on the screen, was:

inews: Out of space in /usr/spool/news. Saving for later processing.

and the program was waiting for input, for every time when
I typed a ^D, the same message showed up. ["Out of space..."]
Getting a process status:
$ ps -fttyB
     UID   PID  PPID  C    STIME TTY      TIME COMMAND
   ccea3  1282     1  0 17:58:32 ttyB     0:04 -sh 
   ccea3  3377  1282  0 22:49:29 ttyB     0:00 rnews -U 
   ccea3  3378  3377  0 22:49:30 ttyB     0:00 rnews -S -p 8902032145d2a 

After inputting more than 1024 chars (14 lines of 80 chars) and typing a ^D,
the /usr/spool/news/.tmp/spXXXXXX file stayed empty.

Finally giving up, I restored some free space, and typed another ^D
to the rnews -U that had been waiting for input all the time. 
Free space: ~9555. Things really started happening then:

- On the screen:
inews: 8902032226d79: Inbound news is garbled
inews: rnews failed, status 256. \
Batch saved in /usr/spool/news/.bad/8902032226d79

- In /usr/lib/news/log:
Feb  3 23:26	local	8902032226d79: Inbound news is garbled
Feb  3 23:26	local	rnews failed, status 256. \
			Batch saved in /usr/spool/news/.bad/8902032226d79

- In /usr/lib/news/errlog:
Feb  3 23:26	ccea3	inews: 8902032226d79: Inbound news is garbled
Feb  3 23:26	Unknown	inews: rnews failed, status 256. \
			Batch saved in /usr/spool/news/.bad/8902032226d79

The .bad/*  file was empty, clearly.

I had another try with low free space and typed 'rnews -U &'.
Not long after that, I had to kill the process, for messages kept
filling my screen (and the logfiles).

However, when disk free space was in order (~9555),
even 'rnews -U' worked fine, and there was no problem at all.

I dived into the code for another two hours, but the fight was unequal.


I restored things back to B 2.11.14 again. :-|