[net.news.b] Bugs in 2.10.2 expire

pag@hao.UUCP (Peter Gross) (03/21/85)

I have discovered two bugs in 2.10.2 expire (at least on PDP-11/70's):
1.  (this one not completely tracked down yet)  If you use the "-a"
    argument (archive) to expire, it may mysteriously die with
    the message "Cannot open /usr/lib/news/active (r):  too many open files".
    After this occurs, your history file is trashed.
2.  Due to # 1, I attemped to rebuild the history file with expire -r.
    This won't work on an 11/70 due to memory running out (even with
    realloc'ing).  There are just too many articles with multiple newsgroups.
    As a fix, I rewrote the history rebuild without using the multihist
    struct.  It works, but right now is unpolished and is not suitable for
    distribution.  It involves using 2 passes to a temp file, the first
    creating a history line for every article in /usr/spool/news, and the second
    to merge multiply-posted newsgroups into one line.

If anyone is desperate for fix 2, contact me.  I will try to clean up my dirty
fix and distribute it.

--peter gross
-- 
--peter gross
UUCP:	{hplabs,seismo}!hao!pag
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