[comp.sys.hp] problems with News expire on HP 9000/840

kamat@uceng.uc.edu (Govind N. Kamat) (08/08/88)

I have been having problems with News 2.11.14 ever since I 
installed it on our HP 9000/840 running HP-UX (HP's version 
of System V with Berkeley enhancements).  The problems are 
mainly with expire.

If new articles come in when expire is running, they get 
spooled into /usr/spool/news/.rnews, to be unspooled later
by "rnews -U" which is invoked automatically when expire is 
done.  But rnews does not seem to be able to extract the
filenames of the spooled files correctly, and I get error
messages like:

inews: freopen (*part of filename here*): No such file or directory
inews: rnews failed, status 256.  Batch saved in /usr/spool/news/*same name*

Rnews loops, giving the same bunch of messages again and again,
until I kill it.  Nothing is saved in /usr/spool/news/ in spite
of what the error messages say.

In fact, even if I delete all the files in .rnews and then 
invoke "rnews -U", it still grabs identical garbage filenames
from the directory-file .rnews, and the same problem re-occurs.

Another problem is that the rebuild history-file option of
expire seems to truncate the history file to an empty file.
The earliest article numbers in the active file get rotated
to the latest, although the articles themselves are not
deleted.  Although we are System V, HP has provided dbm,
and I am using that.

Lastly, the l and L commands of vnews which are supposed to
list articles in a newsgroup don't give any output.

Since the Netnews software seems to be running fine on most
machines, these problems could be something specific to the
HP 9000 series.  If someone out in netland has fixes or 
information about either problem, I'll really appreciate 
hearing about it.  Thanks in advance.

--
Govind N. Kamat
University of Cincinnati
kamat@uceng.uc.edu [129.137.33.1]

okamoto@hpccc.HP.COM (Jeff Okamoto) (08/11/88)

In article <124@uceng.uc.edu>, kamat@uceng.uc.edu (Govind N. Kamat) writes:

> I have been having problems with News 2.11.14 ever since I 
> installed it on our HP 9000/840 running HP-UX (HP's version 
> of System V with Berkeley enhancements).  The problems are 
> mainly with expire.

One problem I have had with expire is with the ndir.o module.  This
will cause expire to run funny.  If you manually compile expire without
ndir.o, expire should work okay.

I have not tried compiling the rest of news without ndir.o.  You may
wish to try it and see if this solves your other problem.

--

 \      oo	The New Number Who,
  \____|\mm	Jeff Okamoto
  //_//\ \_\	HP Corporate Computing Center
 /K-9/  \/_/	okamoto%hpccc@hplabs.hp.com
/___/_____\	..!hplabs!hpccc!okamoto
-----------	(415) 857-6236

jack@csccat.UUCP (Jack Hudler) (08/11/88)

In article <124@uceng.uc.edu> kamat@uceng.uc.edu (Govind N. Kamat) writes:
>
>I have been having problems with News 2.11.14 ever since I 
>installed it on our HP 9000/840 running HP-UX (HP's version 
>of System V with Berkeley enhancements).  The problems are 
>mainly with expire.
>Govind N. Kamat University of Cincinnati kamat@uceng.uc.edu [129.137.33.1]

Try setting the HP9K5 flag so you use the directory stuff that HP 
provides (ndir.h).

Jack Hudler
Computer Support Corporation.
HP9000/310/318/350

crken@sdrc.UUCP (Ken Shackelford) (08/11/88)

In article <5950011@hpccc.HP.COM>, okamoto@hpccc.HP.COM (Jeff Okamoto) writes:
> In article <124@uceng.uc.edu>, kamat@uceng.uc.edu (Govind N. Kamat) writes:
> 
> > I have been having problems with News 2.11.14 ever since I 
> > installed it on our HP 9000/840 running HP-UX (HP's version 
> > of System V with Berkeley enhancements).  The problems are 
> > mainly with expire.
> 
> One problem I have had with expire is with the ndir.o module.  This
> will cause expire to run funny.  If you manually compile expire without
> ndir.o, expire should work okay.

  Also, there is a preprocessor variable (HP9K5) that can be used to fix
this problem (our 9000/825 works fine).  I believe it is referenced in the
file "ndir.h".


Ken Shackelford  (The Wizard of Odd)        UUCP: uunet!sdrc!crken
-----
The pen is mightier than the sword. 
Only if the sword is very small and the pen is very sharp.

pfh@pai.UUCP (Peter Hill) (08/12/88)

In article <1963@csccat.UUCP>, jack@csccat.UUCP (Jack Hudler) writes:
> >I have been having problems with News 2.11.14 ever since I 
> >installed it on our HP 9000/840 running HP-UX...
> 
> Try setting the HP9K5 flag so you use the directory stuff that HP 
> provides (ndir.h).

I think you need to define both HP9K5 and READDIR for news B2.11, at least
on a 9000/320 (HPUX 6.01).

Me, I changed ndir.c so it looks at READDIR instead of HP9K5, so HP9K5
has gone away.  This might be more intuitive for people installing news
on 9000/300s and 9000/800s.

-- 
______________________________________________________________________________
Peter Hill                          pfh@pai.mn.org             +1 612 894 0313
Prime Automation, Inc.              ...{sun!tundra,umn-cs!hall,bungia}!pai!pfh

kamat@uceng.UUCP (Govind N. Kamat) (08/21/88)

In article <124@uceng.uc.edu> kamat@uceng.uc.edu (Govind N. Kamat) writes:
>I have been having problems with News 2.11.14 ever since I 
>installed it on our HP 9000/840 running HP-UX (HP's version 
>of System V with Berkeley enhancements).  The problems are 
>mainly with expire.

There were a number of E-mail replies and a few followup postings 
to my request for help.  Most of them, correctly, suggested that I
define the preprocessor variable HP9K5 when compiling the Netnews
software.  Now expire is running like clockwork on our machine, 
vnews no longer behaves erratically and everything seems to work 
fine!

My thanks to all the Netnews readers who helped me out.

--
Govind N. Kamat
University of Cincinnati
kamat@uceng.uc.edu [129.137.33.1]