Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!sci34hub!gary
From: gary@sci34hub.UUCP (Gary Heston)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Strange articles
Message-ID: <586@sci34hub.UUCP>
Date: 17 Feb 90 03:07:03 GMT
References: <1678@bnlux0.bnl.gov>
Distribution: na
Lines: 35

In article <1678@bnlux0.bnl.gov>, abrams@bnlux0 (The Ancient Programmer) writes:
 
> 	I am running News 2.11.18 and an having a problem with "strange" files.
> Periodically, my News spool is being inundated with files with long numeric 
> names in the /usr/spool/news and /usr/spool/news/.rnews directories. One such
> file is  .../news/.rnews/9002045647f3.

This is a temporary file created by inews, I think, during the unbatch/
post process. It should be removed (by inews) after it's properly
posted. Occasionally a few (or, in a couple of cases I ran into when 
things weren't working quite right, a few thousand) get left behind.
 
>  [ ... ]
> 	In addition, expire seems to hang when processing these files with
> long numeric names.

Expire should never see them. Make sure you're not running expire while
news is being posted, and this problem should not occur. Expiring while
posting can also cause other problems, with the history and active files,
if they should happen to try and modify them at the same time.
 
> 	Has anyone had similar problems? Does anyone have  any idea about 
> what is going on here?

Yep. These things happen... BTW, expire, when it completes, executes a
rnews with a option to clean up and post leftover files, which should 
clear out everything in the .rnews directory. If this isn't happening,
check the ownership and group of the files--my inews seems to randomly
group files to sys and bin as well as news. Expire won't remove files
that aren't in the group news.

-- 
    Gary Heston     { uunet!sci34hub!gary  }    System Mismanager
   SCI Technology, Inc.  OEM Products Department  (i.e., computers)
      Hestons' First Law: I qualify virtually everything I say.