Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!amdahl!drivax!news From: davison@drivax.UUCP (Wayne Davison) Newsgroups: news.software.nn Subject: Re: nnmaster dies Message-ID: Date: 13 Feb 90 02:14:06 GMT References: <5317@m2c.M2C.ORG> Sender: news@drivax.UUCP (news admin) Organization: Digital Research, Monterey CA Lines: 34 lipton@odin.m2c.org (Gary Lipton) wrote: } I had nn running fine for a couple of weeks (under ULTRIX) } but now I can't seem to keep nnmaster running. It goes for a while, } but it doesn't finish updating the groups. Nothing that I know } of has changed. I've tried reinstalling, but it doesn't help. } Any suggestions? It sounds like you've either got an old version of nn (pre-v6.3.6), or there is another database bug to be found. In either case, you can track down the problem using the following tactics: Do an "ls -t" of the nn/db/DATA directory to discover which data file was last updated by nnmaster. The group causing the trouble will be the first group with new news after this one. For example, if the list shows: /usr/spool/nn/db/DATA>l -t total 1426 -rw-rw-r-- 1 news 136 Feb 12 17:56 277.x -rw-rw-r-- 1 news 2183 Feb 12 17:56 277.d then the last group to be sucessfully updated was group 277 (0-relative). Check the GROUPS file in nn/db on line 278 (1-relative, it's a text file) to discover which one it is, and which groups immediately follow it. You can then cd to the offending group, and examine the latest news that came in for corruption. The most likely cause is a header that is too long or mangled in some way (the body of the article shouldn't matter). If you have a pre-6.3.6 version of nn, you still have a bug in the name compression routine that will cause nn to crash when the name header is longer than 256 (or so) bytes. You can get an update to fix it so that this doesn't happen in the future. -- Wayne Davison \ /| / /| \/ /| /(_) davison@drivax.UUCP (_)/ |/ /\| / / |/ \ ...!amdahl!drivax!davison