jamesd@techbook.com (James Deibele) (04/08/91)
We'd like to start retaining news for a longer time. The problem is that we're running System V R3.2 and the i-node limit for a file-system seems to be locked around 64K. I can set higher values, but they don't work. I've heard that people get around this by patching Cnews so that it will recognize directories on different file-systems. Is there a way of handling this that is more generally accepted than others? Does it make a difference if the file-system is mounted via NFS? I'd think other people would be having problems with this too. When I first started out just over a year ago, I had 15 days of news. Due in part to other files and directories on /usr, but also to the increased flow, I've cut back a day about every other month. I'd really like to get back to about two weeks (well, with the obligatory knock on alt.romance.chat) worth of news. Thanks for any help. -- Public Access UNIX at +1 503 644-8135 (1200/2400) Voice: +1 503 646-8257 TECHbooks offers many technical books at discounted prices. E-mail to info@techbook.com or fax to +1 503 248-6320 for details.
geoff@world.std.com (Geoff Collyer) (04/09/91)
James Deibele: >we're running System V R3.2 and the i-node limit for a file-system seems >to be locked around 64K. I can set higher values, but they don't work. >I've heard that people get around this by patching Cnews so that it will >recognize directories on different file-systems. If your system supports symbolic links, you don't need to change C News at all; just mount the other file system(s) in appropriate places (e.g. under /usr/spool/news, or elsewhere with symbolic links from under /usr/spool/news). C News will create symbolic links as necessary under /usr/spool/news. You will need to invoke expire with -l though. If you have a pure System V that lacks symbolic links, help is on the way. At least one person has already modified C News to copy files to implement cross-posting. Something similar will probably become official (though it's going to make spacefor more complicated). >Does it make a difference if the file-system is mounted via NFS? Yes, you can encounter all the usual problems due to a downed file server or due to NFS not implementing Unix file system semantics. If you don't mind various components of the news system hanging or getting "disk i/o" errors when a file server goes down, the former is not a problem for you. We have tried to deal with the latter, but are rethinking that decision: using fsync() to force NFS to report i/o errors is more expensive than we like, and running relaynews (and possibly the input subsystem) anywhere but on the machine with the news file systems is asking for trouble (and will be slow due to synchronous NFS writes). -- Geoff Collyer world.std.com!geoff, uunet.uu.net!geoff
de5@ornl.gov (Dave Sill) (04/09/91)
In article <1991Apr8.203030.7210@world.std.com>, geoff@world.std.com (Geoff Collyer) writes: > >If your system supports symbolic links, you don't need to change C News >at all; just mount the other file system(s) in appropriate places (e.g. >under /usr/spool/news, or elsewhere with symbolic links from under >/usr/spool/news). C News will create symbolic links as necessary under >/usr/spool/news. You will need to invoke expire with -l though. Why would C News create symbolic links? If you've symlinked an additional filesystem under /usr/spool/news, wouldn't it just follow the symlink and create regular files? I assume the -l option to expire is required to make it follow symlinks. >If you have a pure System V that lacks symbolic links, help is on the way. >At least one person has already modified C News to copy files to implement >cross-posting. How does copying cross-posted articles help? You're still using an i-node. I must be missing something. -- Dave Sill (de5@ornl.gov) It will be a great day when our schools have Martin Marietta Energy Systems all the money they need and the Air Force Workstation Support has to hold a bake sale to buy a new bomber.
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (04/10/91)
In article <1991Apr9.164220.13618@cs.utk.edu> Dave Sill <de5@ornl.gov> writes: >Why would C News create symbolic links? If you've symlinked an >additional filesystem under /usr/spool/news, wouldn't it just follow >the symlink and create regular files? You have a slight misunderstanding here; the issue is cross-posted articles, where the news system tries to make only *one* copy. In that case, if the places where links are supposed to be are on different filesystems, it has to make symbolic links. >I assume the -l option to >expire is required to make it follow symlinks. No, there is no "following" needed; the issue is that expire has to know that it shouldn't blow away the first link to the article -- because some or all of the others may be symlinks to that copy -- until all the others have departed. >How does copying cross-posted articles help? You're still using an >i-node... On a different file system. -- "The stories one hears about putting up | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology SunOS 4.1.1 are all true." -D. Harrison| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
geoff@world.std.com (Geoff Collyer) (04/10/91)
Whoa, Dave, let's back up. The original query was from someone on a system that lacks symbolic links or any file system type that can support over 64k inodes per file system (e.g. V7 or pre-SVR4 System V). He wants to keep more than 64k news articles on-line at a time. Traditionally, crossposted articles have been stored as a single file with multiple links (e.g. "Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.internals" causes an article to be stored as a file with two links: /usr/spool/news/comp/unix/wizards/123456 and /usr/spool/news/comp/unix/internals/324516). This saves space compared to making copies. If C News can't make the necessary (hard) links, it will make symbolic links instead, on systems that have them (e.g. SVR4, 4BSD, Eunice). So on a system that has small i-numbers (typically two bytes) but does have symbolic links (e.g. V8), one can just mount other file system(s) in appropriate places (e.g. under /usr/spool/news, or elsewhere with symbolic links from under /usr/spool/news). expire -l causes expire to remove the lexically-first file name only when it is ready to remove the last of the file names for a given article, since all names but the first may be symbolic links in such circumstances. Making copies rather than links wastes space but permits one to use multiple file systems for /usr/spool/news on systems that lack symbolic links (or indeed to deal with crossposted articles on systems that lack any form of links). This is in the works. -- Geoff Collyer world.std.com!geoff, uunet.uu.net!geoff
kevin@cfctech.cfc.com (Kevin Darcy) (04/18/91)
In article <1991Apr9.171737.13113@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >In article <1991Apr9.164220.13618@cs.utk.edu> Dave Sill <de5@ornl.gov> writes: > >>How does copying cross-posted articles help? You're still using an >>i-node... > >On a different file system. Indeed. Maybe this would clarify things: Script started on Wed Apr 17 18:23:44 1991 $ df -t | sed -n '/news/,$p' /news (/dev/dsk/c1t5d0s8): 22584 blocks 5997 i-nodes total: 49920 blocks 6240 i-nodes /news/spool (/dev/dsk/c1t5d0s9): 41511 blocks 8238 i-nodes total: 347520 blocks 65496 i-nodes /news/spool/rec (/dev/dsk/c1t5d0sa): 30011 blocks 3340 i-nodes total: 127872 blocks 25568 i-nodes /news/spool/alt (/dev/dsk/c1t5d0sb): 25770 blocks 5807 i-nodes total: 104064 blocks 20800 i-nodes $ exit Script done on Wed Apr 17 18:23:58 1991 See? Each of the spool partitions has up to ~64K inodes. With 3 like this, I could theoretically store up to ~192K articles (not counting directories, etc.) With 4 partitions, ~256K, and so on... Of course, I don't have the space (or the inclination) to store that many articles, so I just run 3 partitions, and "comfortable" numbers of inodes for each. Still, (65496 + 25568 + 20800 = 111864) inodes is quite a bit to play with. AT&T 3B2/1000 Model 80 running SysVr3.2.2. >-- >"The stories one hears about putting up | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology >SunOS 4.1.1 are all true." -D. Harrison| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ kevin@cfctech.cfc.com | Kevin Darcy, Unix Systems Administrator ...sharkey!cfctech!kevin | Technical Services (CFC) Voice: (313) 948-4863 | Chrysler Corporation Fax: (313) 948-4975 | 27777 Franklin, Southfield, MI 48034 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
eah@xenitec.on.ca (Ed Hew happily using ksh) (04/22/91)
In article <1991Apr9.211906.20833@world.std.com> geoff@world.std.com (Geoff Collyer) writes: > [....] >If C News can't make the necessary (hard) links, it will make symbolic >links instead, on systems that have them (e.g. SVR4, 4BSD, Eunice). So >on a system that has small i-numbers (typically two bytes) but does have >symbolic links (e.g. V8), one can just mount other file system(s) in >appropriate places (e.g. under /usr/spool/news, or elsewhere with >symbolic links from under /usr/spool/news). > [....] >-- >Geoff Collyer world.std.com!geoff, uunet.uu.net!geoff ....and now for the good news for those of us running SCO SysVr3.2.x ....I have it on reliable authority (he'd strangle me if I mentioned his name) that SCO has implimented symlinks (and some other goodies) for their next release of SysVr3.2 . The bad news is that I don't think there's a release date yet. I just know that my patience will finally be rewarded. It's nice to get something you explicitly asked for. :-) -- Ed. A. Hew <edhew@xenitec.on.ca>, XeniTec Consulting Services or if you're really stuck: ..!{watmath|lsuc}!xenitec!eah [sco.opendesktop newsgroup <=> mlist gateway maintainer]