yale@efi.com (Yale Rosenblatt) (04/04/91)
I receive this type of error now and then and instead of not doing anything about it, I'd like to be knowledgeable about it. errlog.o --------- relaynews: control `: cancel <1991Mar15.005300.23869@eng.umd.edu>' looks unsafe to execute --------- recent bad input batches: bad/670153263 -- Yale Rosenblatt Electronics for Imaging uunet!efi!yale yale@efi.com
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (04/04/91)
In article <1991Apr3.174739.25568@efi.com> yale@efi.com (Yale Rosenblatt) writes: > I receive this type of error now and then and instead of >not doing anything about it, I'd like to be knowledgeable >about it. > >errlog.o >--------- >relaynews: control `: cancel <1991Mar15.005300.23869@eng.umd.edu>' looks unsafe to > execute >--------- Actually, the right thing to do about it is nothing. Somebody sent out a control message that relaynews didn't like the looks of, and that is almost invariably their problem, not yours. In this case, the extra colon on the front prevented relaynews from recognizing it as a cancel (the handling of which is built in), and when relaynews considered the possibility of running it as a shell command with a suitable search path (which is how most of the rest of the control messages are processed), it saw the "<" and ">", said "this contains shell metacharacters and could be dangerous", and decided not to try. No further action is needed or desirable. >recent bad input batches: >bad/670153263 This is a buglet in the software; an invalid control message should not be causing the batch to be marked bad. This will be fixed. -- "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