Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!think!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!kuhub.cc.ukans.edu!sloane
From: sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Bob Sloane)
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: Re: ** Convert/reclaim in Newspack.com failing **
Message-ID: <22388.25ed02a9@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
Date: 1 Mar 90 17:08:25 GMT
References: <1872@clyde.concordia.ca> <18477.25ea4d0e@ccavax.camb.com>
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services
Lines: 76

In article <18477.25ea4d0e@ccavax.camb.com>, glassmann@ccavax.camb.com writes:
> CONVERT needs exclusive access to the file.  That means that any user running
> NEWS will cause it to fail. It would be nice if there was a way to kick users
> out of NEWS when you're ready to run CONVERT, and keep them out until you're
> done.

Funny you should ask. :-)   Just this week I needed to move all of the
NEWS file do another device, so I needed some way to lock people out
of NEWS until the move was done.  First, I modified NNTP_ACCESS.NEWS
to contain just the line:

no.nntp.access read post *

Then I wrote a short FORTRAN program:

       STOP "News is unavailable for file reorgisation."
       END

I compiled and linked the FORTRAN program and replaced the NEWS
executable with this new program.  Then I removed NEWS.EXE in INSTALL
so that new users would get the message from the FORTRAN program.

I killed off the currently running NEWSSKIM batch job.  Since this was
happening about midnight, I didn't need to kill off any NEWS users,
but I would probably have used some sort of program to use $FORCEX to
kill off NEWS as needed.  After this, SHOW DEVICE/FILE on the old
device where NEWS was kept showed that none of the files were busy.
Then I started the BACKUP to copy NEWS to the new device.  About 15
hours later, the copy finished, and I fixed everything up.

Anyway, it is possible to kill off NEWS and keep users out using these
methods.  NNTP_ACCESS.NEWS will keep any nntp clients from accessing
the server, and replacing NEWS.EXE will keep any new users out.  For
users currently using NEWS, you can stop their process, or (more
friendly) you can $FORCEX them out of NEWS. While I had the files
available, I used the following procedure to compress NEWS.ITEMS and
NEWS.GROUPS.
-- 
USmail: Bob Sloane, University of Kansas Computer Center, Lawrence, KS, 66045
E-mail: sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu, sloane@ukanvax.bitnet, AT&T: (913)864-0444 

$ !		N E W S P A C K . C O M
$ !
$ ! Author:
$ !     G Huston
$ !       Computer Services Centre
$ !       Australian National University
$ ! Modified by:
$ !     Bob Sloane University of Kansas Computing Services
$ !     added code to optimize indexed files
$ !
$ ! Version
$ !     V5.3    05-May-1989     RRS
$ !     V5.2    26-Apr-1988     GIH
$ !
$ !
$ !**********************************************************************
$ !     Start code
$ !
$   on error then goto abort
$   oldprv = f$setprv("SYSPRV")
$   if .not. f$privilege("SYSPRV") then exit
$   analyze/rms/fdl/output=news_root:newsgroups.fdl news_root:news.groups
$   edit/fdl/analyze=news_root:newsgroups.fdl/nointer news_root:newsgroups.fdl
$   convert/fdl=news_root:newsgroups -
             news_root:news.groups news_root:news.groups
$   purge news_root:news.groups
$   purge news_root:newsgroups.fdl
$   analyze/rms/fdl/output=news_root:newsitems.fdl news_root:news.items
$   edit/fdl/analyze=news_root:newsitems.fdl/nointer news_root:newsitems.fdl
$   convert/fdl=news_root:newsitems.fdl -
             news_root:news.items news_root:news.items
$   purge news_root:news.items
$   purge news_root:newsitems.fdl
$ abort:
$    exit