[news.software.b] faster B-news expire?

tgp@sei.cmu.edu (Tod Pike) (05/02/91)

  I've heard that there are some faster expire programs that will work under
b-news.  I find that I'm in need of one...I simply can't tolerate an expire
that runs for 8 hours each night (on a SparcStation 1+)!  Can anyone point me
to faster expires?  I know that C-news is supposed to expire much faster, but
I can't upgrade yet.  Thanks.

			Tod Pike
			tgp@sei.cmu.edu

Internet: tgp@sei.cmu.edu
Mail:     Carnegie Mellon University
	  Software Engineering Institute
	  Pittsburgh, PA. 15213-3980

henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (05/02/91)

In article <24869@as0c.sei.cmu.edu> tgp@sei.cmu.edu (Tod Pike) writes:
>...faster expires?  I know that C-news is supposed to expire much faster, but
>I can't upgrade yet.  Thanks.

The C News expire should work with B News -- it was designed to, although
this hasn't been checked lately -- with the proviso that if you want it to
respect explicit expiry dates, you need a small B News patch (posted long
ago) to generate exactly the format of history file that C News uses.
-- 
And the bean-counter replied,           | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
"beans are more important".             |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry

billd@fps.com (Bill Davidson) (05/06/91)

In article <1991May2.040520.14012@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>The C News expire should work with B News -- it was designed to, although
>this hasn't been checked lately -- with the proviso that if you want it to
>respect explicit expiry dates, you need a small B News patch (posted long
>ago) to generate exactly the format of history file that C News uses.

I thought that there were file locking issues due to the different
locking mechanisms which Bnews and Cnews use.

Am I confused or just out of date?

Would my active file and history files be safe if I just tried to run
Cnews expire with Bnews 2.11.19 out of the box?

--Bill Davidson

henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (05/07/91)

In article <17468@celit.fps.com> billd@fps.com (Bill Davidson) writes:
>>The C News expire should work with B News...
>
>I thought that there were file locking issues due to the different
>locking mechanisms which Bnews and Cnews use.

Once upon a time the two were compatible, and C New's locking hasn't changed.
I think they are still compatible if you tell B News to use link() to do its
locking, although it's been so long since I configured a B system that I
make no promises on this.
-- 
And the bean-counter replied,           | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
"beans are more important".             |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry