Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Dynamic "smart" expiration?
Message-ID: <1990Jan3.165443.27811@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1989Dec27.033817.9953@smsc.sony.com> <1989Dec28.063932.13720@robohack.UUCP> <432@texas.dk> <1989Dec31.083610.10649@robohack.UUCP> <1990Jan2.152917.15117@eci386.uucp>
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 90 16:54:43 GMT

In article <1990Jan2.152917.15117@eci386.uucp> woods@eci386.UUCP (Greg A. Woods) writes:
>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...

Well, not necessarily.  If you are running with small or zero margins,
then yes, you're in trouble if you blow them even slightly... but with
substantial and well-chosen margins (notably, "articles" margin less than
"incoming" margin, so that newsrun notices trouble before rnews starts
throwing away files), it still makes sense.

>Besides, having the input
>handler's manage disk space is confusing the functionality...

Disk space is one of those ugly global issues that really has to be
everybody's job.  The "right" solution is just to have enough reserve
space that nobody ever has to worry about it, but many systems don't
have that luxury.

>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.

Actually, newswatch was motivated by the discovery that since C News
stuff is very patient about waiting for locks, a locking problem could
go unnoticed for a long time.  However, using it to keep an eye on space
problems is not unreasonable.
-- 
1972: Saturn V #15 flight-ready|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1990: birds nesting in engines | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu