[net.news.b] Problem with inews under 4.1BSD

dhb@rayssd.UUCP (11/09/83)

We just ran into a problem with "inews" that was indirectly
caused by the fact that I was away for a week or so.  We are
running 4.1BSD and have "resource limitations" enabled.  The
problem we had was that we have the filesize limit set to
2 Mb and the log file became larger than that.  What made the
situation more puzzling was that it only affected users
trying to post articles or followups and did not affect our
normal news feed.  It turned out that our news feed ran as
"root" and was thus not affected by the filesize limit.

The cure is quite simple.  We are setting up something to run
once a week zero out the log file.  Another way to attack the
problem would be to put a call to "vlimit" in inews.

Now for my question (there's always a question).  Is the log
file ever used for anything?  Is there any reason why I shouldn't
just null it out once a week?  (I actually plan to copy it and
then null it.)  I don't remember seeing anything in the installation
manual but it's been a while and I don't have the manual handy.
-- 
	Dave Brierley
	Raytheon Co.; Portsmouth RI; (401)-847-8000 x4073
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mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (11/10/83)

The log file is there for people to look at it, when something goes
wrong or you want to check that a certain article made it through.
No program reads it.

On cbosgd, each week we move log to olog and create a new log.
This way we always have at least 1 week of log around.