[news.software.b] How to prevent links.

jp@tygra.UUCP (John Palmer) (04/10/91)

I had to carve up my /usr/spool filesystem into /usr/spool and 
/usr/spool/news/comp because I was running out of INODES. (This
is a SCO XENIX 2.3.2 system). 

Problem is that relaynews was returning 'bad' after most batches.
The problem turned out to be with newsgroups crossposted to comp
and some other hierarchy. relaynews would try to create a symbolic
link instead of a duplicate copy of the article and would run into
problems as XENIX doesn't allow cross-filesystem symbolic links. 

Is there any way to fix this?? It seems unreasonable to expect that all
news will always be on the same partition as XENIX allows a maximum
of only 65500 inodes per filesystem.

Also, what is the latest version of CNEWS?? We have patches through
12-MAR-1990. Also, what archive server would have a copy of the 
patch program?? 

Does anyone know wether REAL UNIX SVR3 allows cross-filesystem links??

Thanks.
-- 
CAT-TALK Conferencing System   |  "Buster Bunny is an abused | E-MAIL:
+1 313 343 0800 (USR HST)      |   child. Trust me - I'm a   |  jp@tygra.UUCP
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********EIGHT NODES*********** |   -- Roger Rabbit           | ..jp

davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) (04/10/91)

In article <1991Apr10.043241.16040@tygra.UUCP> jp@tygra.UUCP (John Palmer) writes:

| Problem is that relaynews was returning 'bad' after most batches.
| The problem turned out to be with newsgroups crossposted to comp
| and some other hierarchy. relaynews would try to create a symbolic
| link instead of a duplicate copy of the article and would run into
| problems as XENIX doesn't allow cross-filesystem symbolic links. 

  Your confusion isn't limited to news... Xenix doesn't allow symbolic
links at all. That's part of your problem.

  There's a low pain solution for B news, but with C news you're on your
own. Perhaps one of the C news people will offer a suggestion, but I
think they all run BSD.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
        "Most of the VAX instructions are in microcode,
         but halt and no-op are in hardware for efficiency"

henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (04/10/91)

In article <1991Apr10.043241.16040@tygra.UUCP> jp@tygra.UUCP (John Palmer) writes:
>Is there any way to fix this?? It seems unreasonable to expect that all
>news will always be on the same partition ...

Once upon a time, we kept a month of news on a partition with 16-bit inode
numbers (a partition that was used for a lot of other things too, I might
add!).  Times change...

>Also, what is the latest version of CNEWS??

The latest patch is 24-Mar-1991.
-- 
And the bean-counter replied,           | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
"beans are more important".             |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry

ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo) (04/12/91)

henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:

> Once upon a time, we kept a month of news on a partition with 16-bit inode
> numbers (a partition that was used for a lot of other things too, I might
> add!).  Times change...

But what about the number of hours/week spent reading the news?

-- 
Ronald Khoo <ronald@robobar.co.uk> +44 81 991 1142 (O) +44 71 229 7741 (H)

sadler@heurikon.heurikon.com (Jonathan Sadler) (04/13/91)

In article <1991Apr10.043241.16040@tygra.UUCP> jp@tygra.UUCP (John Palmer) writes:
>I had to carve up my /usr/spool filesystem into /usr/spool and 
>/usr/spool/news/comp because I was running out of INODES. (This
>is a SCO XENIX 2.3.2 system). 

We had a similar problem here last Dec.

>Problem is that relaynews was returning 'bad' after most batches.
>The problem turned out to be with newsgroups crossposted to comp
>and some other hierarchy. relaynews would try to create a symbolic
>link instead of a duplicate copy of the article and would run into
>problems as XENIX doesn't allow cross-filesystem symbolic links. 

>Is there any way to fix this?? 

We did a local patch to B-news' inews/rnews to handle this condition.
If interested, I can clean up the patch and send it to you.

>Does anyone know wether REAL UNIX SVR3 allows cross-filesystem links??

Nope.  We are using SVR3 here.

Jonathan Sadler

kevin@cfctech.cfc.com (Kevin Darcy) (04/18/91)

In article <1991Apr10.043241.16040@tygra.UUCP> jp@tygra.UUCP (John Palmer) writes:
>I had to carve up my /usr/spool filesystem into /usr/spool and 
>/usr/spool/news/comp because I was running out of INODES. (This
>is a SCO XENIX 2.3.2 system). 
>
>Problem is that relaynews was returning 'bad' after most batches.
>The problem turned out to be with newsgroups crossposted to comp
>and some other hierarchy. relaynews would try to create a symbolic
>link instead of a duplicate copy of the article and would run into
>problems as XENIX doesn't allow cross-filesystem symbolic links. 

Er, are you saying that XENIX allows same-filesystem symbolic links? That
would be rather odd, implementing one but not the other...

>Is there any way to fix this?? It seems unreasonable to expect that all
>news will always be on the same partition as XENIX allows a maximum
>of only 65500 inodes per filesystem.

"Reasonableness" has little to do with it. Back when news was young, it
all fit on one partition. Over the years many, if not most Un*x boxes running 
news have acquired symlinks, thus permitting multiple-partitions 
transparently.

What's "unreasonable" is that AT&T took so long to stretch inode number fields
from a ushort to a long...

>Does anyone know wether REAL UNIX SVR3 allows cross-filesystem links??
>
>Thanks.

My SVR3 is so REAL it has a death-star on the tape label... 

(But no symlinks either. Sniff. But I'm much better now.)

>-- 
>CAT-TALK Conferencing System   |  "Buster Bunny is an abused | E-MAIL:
>+1 313 343 0800 (USR HST)      |   child. Trust me - I'm a   |  jp@tygra.UUCP
>+1 313 343 2925 (TELEBIT PEP)  |   professional..."          | ..sharkey!tygra!
>********EIGHT NODES*********** |   -- Roger Rabbit           | ..jp

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