Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!visdc!jiii
From: jiii@visdc.UUCP (John E Van Deusen III)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: USENET Software: History and Sources (Updated: 12 November 1988)
Summary: News 2.11, patchlevel 14 is current for many systems
Message-ID: <477@visdc.UUCP>
Date: 10 Mar 89 18:44:53 GMT
References: <6189@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <25358@conexch.UUCP>
Reply-To: jiii@visdc.UUCP (John E Van Deusen III)
Organization: VI Software Development, Boise, Idaho
Lines: 40

In article <25358@conexch.UUCP> (Larry Dighera) writes:
| In article <6189@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> (Gene Spafford) writes:
| | The current release of news is 2.11, patchlevel 14, dated 12/1/87.

| On January 25, 1989 Rick Adams issued patches 15, 16, and 17 for news
| 2.11.  So, isn't the current release of news 2.11 patchlevel 17 ?

News 2.11 patchlevel 17 may be the current version if you have a
Sequent, but as someone who has applied the patches, wasted a couple of
days debugging, and restored to patchlevel 14; I can assure you that
level 14 is the highest level that works "out of the box" on UNIX V.0
machines.

The following is one example is taken from patch 15:

        ***************
        *** 746,747
        while (link(tempname, lockname)) {
        #endif /* !VMS */
        --- 774,778 -----
        while (link(tempname, lockname)) {
        + #else /* O_EXCL */
===>    + 	while ((fd=(open(lockname, O_EXCL|O_CREAT, 0) < 0) {
|       + #endif /* O_EXCL */
|       #endif /* !VMS */
|       ***************
|
The "while" statement being added contains a syntax error that never
shows up, because O_EXCL is defined in <fcntl.h> and is not #included.

The problems in the patches above level 14 could be fixed, but I can
certainly understand why Rick Adams might want to wash his hands of
maintaining this software, especially for antique machines.  What a
difficult, unrewarding and thankless job!  Still, if the News B software
is to be frozen without support while awaiting replacement, for a large
number of systems it will have to be at patchlevel 14.
--
John E Van Deusen III, PO Box 9283, Boise, ID  83707, (208) 343-1865

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