Path: utzoo!utstat!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!tmsoft!robohack!eci386!woods
From: woods@eci386.uucp (Greg A. Woods)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Dynamic "smart" expiration?
Keywords: expire,C news
Message-ID: <1990Jan2.152917.15117@eci386.uucp>
Date: 2 Jan 90 15:29:17 GMT
References: <1989Dec27.033817.9953@smsc.sony.com> <1989Dec28.063932.13720@robohack.UUCP> <432@texas.dk> <1989Dec31.083610.10649@robohack.UUCP>
Reply-To: woods@eci386.UUCP (Greg A. Woods)
Organization: R. H. Lathwell Associates: Elegant Communications, Inc.
Lines: 37

In article <1989Dec31.083610.10649@robohack.UUCP> woods@robohack.UUCP (Greg A. Woods) writes:
> In article <432@texas.dk> storm@texas.dk (Kim F. Storm) writes:
> > woods@robohack.UUCP (Greg A. Woods) writes:
> > >Either the quickest, or the longest,
> > >expire could be used for all links, or each link could be expired
> > >separately, with space gained only upon expiration of the last link.
> > 
> > Either you expire an article because disk-space is sparse (or due to
> > some other resource related policy), or you keep the article.
> 
> And since inodes are also a resource, this is a resource conserving
> option.

Open mouth, insert foot.  OOPS.  My reasoning and deduction logic
seems to have skipped a step.  For some reason I'd forgotten that
links only require a directory entry, and as such it'll take quite a
few cross-post deletions, and a very smart filesystem, and a sudden
halt in news flow before you'll ever gain any disk space!  This was
kindly pointed out to me in mail by Brad Templeton.

The other reasons I mentioned are still relevant for those of us who
don't really like using kill files, or can't.  Kind of like having a
truely global kill file!  But I can see my argument for this option
slowly breaking down....

I would also like to point out that having newsrun do the expire's is
not of much help for those of us who run rnews.immed.  By the time
newsrun gets going, it's too late.  Besides, having the input
handler's manage disk space is confusing the functionality.  If you
have space problems, use newswatch to look out for such conditions and
do something about them.  That's what (I assume) it's for.
-- 
						Greg A. Woods

woods@{eci386,gate,robohack,ontmoh,tmsoft,gpu.utcs.UToronto.CA,utorgpu.BITNET}
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