Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cheops.cis.ohio-state.edu!karl
From: karl@cheops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: Abysmal disk usage in unbatching news - suggestions?
Message-ID: <KARL.89May25110233@cheops.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 25 May 89 15:02:33 GMT
References: <26@anasaz.UUCP>
Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Organization: Ohio State Computer Science
Lines: 18
In-reply-to: duane@anasaz.UUCP's message of 24 May 89 23:40:26 GMT

duane@anasaz.UUCP writes:
   How do big System V sites deal with this? Does rnews -U run around
   the clock there?
   ... Anybody have a better idea?

A far better solution is to convince your SysV-compiled system to cope
with DBM files.  To do so, pick up copies of a dbm library from, e.g.,
the X distributions, or the once-postd mdbm library (which was my
solution).  Build yourself a /usr/lib/libdbm.a, add #define DBM to
defs.h and -DDBM and -ldbm to your Makefile, and remake the Known
Universe.  Re-install the result, and run expire -r to rebuild your
history files in DBM format.  I got at least a 4x throughput increase
in [ir]news by doing so, on a (now defunct) 3B2/400 running SysVRel3.0.

The ancient cruft of SysV's /usr/lib/news/history.d is a crime against
Man, Nature, and Computer Science.

--Karl