Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!apple!epimass!jbuck
From: jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: rnews saving incoming news
Message-ID: <3053@epimass.EPI.COM>
Date: 5 Apr 89 21:58:17 GMT
References: <537@bdt.UUCP>
Reply-To: jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, CA
Lines: 22

In article <537@bdt.UUCP> david@bdt.UUCP (David Beckemeyer) writes:
>I am confused about some of the temp files that rnews creates when delaing
>with incoming news.   I haven't found a description of it in my news docs.

The files of the form .arXXXXX and .inXXXXX are temporary files made
by rnews when it installs an article.  One is the article without the
header, and one is the article with the header.  They never should be
left around, but frequently are when error conditions arise, like
"disk full".   They aren't documented because they aren't supposed to be
there.  (Famous last words).

The files with long numeric names in the .rnews directory, on the other
hand, ARE documented.  If expire is running when articles arrive, or if
SPOOLNEWS is defined, incoming news isn't processed until an "rnews -U"
is run (expire forks one of these off when it completes).  These files
are usually compressed batches, but they may also be individual articles
(if you get some news unbatched, or if a local user posts).  "rnews -U"
digests all the stuff in the /usr/spool/news/.rnews directory; you can
run this if you like if you end up with files there unexpectedly.

-- 
-- Joe Buck	jbuck@epimass.epi.com, uunet!epimass.epi.com!jbuck