erf@progress.COM (Eric Feigenson) (12/04/90)
I'm running c-news on a BBC '386 running Intel Unix (System V). We've patchdates applied through 25-May-1990. Expire (called through doexpire) seems to have trouble when it tries to link history to history.n, and gives a "disaster" error message. Expire is setuid/setgid news, the history file and the directory its in are owned by news, the setnewsids program is present and is setuid root, and we run doexpire through cron with the command "su news -c /usr/lib/news/expire/doexpire -v". Any idea what could be causing this? Thanks (in advance) for your help! -EricF -- Eric R. Feigenson UUCP: mit-eddie!progress!erf Progress Software Corp. Internet: erf@progress.com 5 Oak Park Bedford, MA 01730
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (12/05/90)
In article <1990Dec3.180740.10115@progress.com> erf@progress.COM (Eric Feigenson) writes: >... Expire (called through doexpire) >seems to have trouble when it tries to link history to history.n, and gives a >"disaster" error message... Weird. This is not likely to be a permission problem, since running doexpire as "news" should eliminate any permission issues. (Making expire setuid is not necessary, in fact might not be a good idea, and setnewsids is not relevant to expire.) What does "ls -lg hist*" in the directory afterwards show? The evidence should be left around. -- "The average pointer, statistically, |Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology points somewhere in X." -Hugh Redelmeier| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
kdq@demott.com (Kevin D. Quitt) (04/13/91)
Every time expire runs, I get the following mail:
expire problems:
expire: alt.aquaria' (unmoderated) not covered by control filegroup `
It used to be a different group, but I removed the group (and the name
just moved doen to the next on the liast). I've rebuilt the history file.
Help!
--
_
Kevin D. Quitt demott!kdq kdq@demott.com
DeMott Electronics Co. 14707 Keswick St. Van Nuys, CA 91405-1266
VOICE (818) 988-4975 FAX (818) 997-1190 MODEM (818) 997-4496 PEP last
96.37% of all statistics are made up.henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (04/13/91)
In article <1991Apr12.173801.17063@demott.com> kdq@demott.com (Kevin D. Quitt) writes: > > Every time expire runs, I get the following mail: > >expire problems: >expire: alt.aquaria' (unmoderated) not covered by control filegroup ` Is this the exact form of the message? It shouldn't be mangled like that... As for the cause, please RTFM (in this case, expire(8)): The first line of the control file which applies to a given article is used to control its expiry. It is an error for no line to apply; the last line should be something like `all x 7 -' to ensure that at least one line is always applicable. -- And the bean-counter replied, | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology "beans are more important". | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
kdq@demott.com (Kevin D. Quitt) (04/13/91)
WRT my previous post, please reply by e-mail. We're frequently down
to 0 inodes because of the expiration problem, and we're losing news.
Thanks.
--
_
Kevin D. Quitt demott!kdq kdq@demott.com
DeMott Electronics Co. 14707 Keswick St. Van Nuys, CA 91405-1266
VOICE (818) 988-4975 FAX (818) 997-1190 MODEM (818) 997-4496 PEP last
96.37% of all statistics are made up.mike@pensoft.uucp (Mike Heath) (04/16/91)
In article <1991Apr12.204143.21508@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >In article <1991Apr12.173801.17063@demott.com> kdq@demott.com (Kevin D. Quitt) writes: >> >> Every time expire runs, I get the following mail: >> >>expire problems: >>expire: alt.aquaria' (unmoderated) not covered by control filegroup ` > >Is this the exact form of the message? It shouldn't be mangled like that... I installed C-news just in the last month and I had the same problem. Here is the message I received: From LOGIN Sun Apr 7 21:00:03 1991 Received: by pensoft.UUCP (5.61/smail2.5/09-07-90) id AA03621; Sun, 7 Apr 91 21:00:03 -0500 Date: Sun, 7 Apr 91 21:00:03 -0500 From: LOGIN Message-Id: <9104080200.AA03621@pensoft.UUCP> /Usr/Lib/Newsbin/Expire/Expire: group `alt.activism' (unmoderated) not covered b y control file (no details given) Apparently-To: root Status: RO ************************************************* Cron: The previous message is the standard output and standard error of one of your cron commands. > >As for the cause, please RTFM (in this case, expire(8)): > > The first line of the control file which applies to a given article is > used to control its expiry. > It is an error for no line to apply; > the last line should be something like `all x 7 -' > to ensure that at least one line is always applicable. The last line of my control file is `all x 10 -'. I fixed the problem by adding alt.activism into the control file. I haven't gotten the message since, though I still don't understand why I got it in the first place. I do have a control line for alt. The version of C-news I'm running is at patchlevel 15-Dec-1990 and I'm running it on a 386 with System V/386 Release 3.2 (ISC 2.0.2). -- Mike Heath Pencom Software pensoft!mike@cs.utexas.edu
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (04/17/91)
In article <1991Apr16.165148.58@pensoft.uucp> mike@pensoft.uucp (Mike Heath) writes: >>>expire: alt.aquaria' (unmoderated) not covered by control filegroup ` >> >>Is this the exact form of the message? It shouldn't be mangled like that... > >I installed C-news just in the last month and I had the same problem. > ... >/Usr/Lib/Newsbin/Expire/Expire: group `alt.activism' (unmoderated) not covered b >y control file (no details given) Well, no, not the same problem. Note that your message makes sense, where his was curiously mangled. >The last line of my control file is `all x 10 -'... Now this is a bit of a mystery; that line ought to be taking care of all comers, so expire shouldn't be squawking about uncovered groups. What are the previous few lines like, and the one for alt? -- And the bean-counter replied, | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology "beans are more important". | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
mike@pensoft.uucp (Mike Heath) (04/18/91)
In article <1991Apr16.194717.8358@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >In article <1991Apr16.165148.58@pensoft.uucp> mike@pensoft.uucp (Mike Heath) writes: >>/Usr/Lib/Newsbin/Expire/Expire: group `alt.activism' (unmoderated) not covered b >>y control file (no details given) > >Well, no, not the same problem. Note that your message makes sense, where >his was curiously mangled. > >>The last line of my control file is `all x 10 -'... > >Now this is a bit of a mystery; that line ought to be taking care of all >comers, so expire shouldn't be squawking about uncovered groups. What >are the previous few lines like, and the one for alt? OK, now I feel really stupid. I saw this error message a few days after I had fixed my real problem with expire (cron output isn't mailed to me). I was calling expire from cron instead of doexpire. Naturally alt.activism is the first newgroup in my active file. A quick test of: $ expire < /dev/null expire: group `alt.activism' (unmoderated) not covered by control file (no detai ls given) shows the same behaviour. Sorry for the false alert. I guess I can take alt.activism out of explist now. -- Mike Heath Pencom Software pensoft!mike@cs.utexas.edu
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (04/18/91)
In article <1991Apr17.171052.6928@pensoft.uucp> mike@pensoft.uucp (Mike Heath) writes: >$ expire < /dev/null >expire: group `alt.activism' (unmoderated) not covered by control file (no detai >ls given) Hmm. While it is "customer error", that's not a very informative diagnosis. Okay, expire has now been fixed -- it'll show up in the next patch -- to squawk explicitly about an empty control file. -- And the bean-counter replied, | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology "beans are more important". | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry