[news.software.b] Losing Map entries

smitty@essnj1.ESSNJAY.COM (Hibbard T. Smith JR) (03/15/91)

I'm running b news version 19.  I'm also using the map building and saving
software distributed with smail-3.1.19.  Here's the problem:

The news software builds a batch file of incoming uucp map article file names.
When getmap runs (3 times a week), quite often I get errors from getmap 
claiming that it can't open some article files.  When I look, sure enough,
no such article exists. Usually these articles are sandwiched by sequential
neighbors who get processed just fine.  It would seem that these articles 
vanish in the 1 or 2 days from their arrival to the getmap run's trying to
get them.  No mention in the news errlog or log files of anything in connection
with the missing articles.  Since the article numbers appear in the batch file
which is built by inews when he's unpacking and filing the articles, I have
to assume they were there in the first place.  Boy, am I confused ;-) .

If anyone can shed some light on this, I'd sure appreciate it.  Thanks in
advance for any help.

-- 
		Smitty
-------------------------------------------
Hibbard T. Smith JR                 smitty@essnj1.ESSNJAY.COM	
ESSNJAY Systems Inc.                uunet!hsi!essnj1!smitty

clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) (03/18/91)

In article <807@essnj1.ESSNJAY.COM> smitty@essnj1.ESSNJAY.COM (Hibbard T. Smith JR) writes:
>The news software builds a batch file of incoming uucp map article file names.
>When getmap runs (3 times a week), quite often I get errors from getmap 
>claiming that it can't open some article files.  When I look, sure enough,
>no such article exists. Usually these articles are sandwiched by sequential
>neighbors who get processed just fine.  It would seem that these articles 
>vanish in the 1 or 2 days from their arrival to the getmap run's trying to
>get them.

Probably means that an article came along later that "Supercedes:" it.
Which means, the map originators reissued the map in just a few days and
the first copy gets cancelled.  I've noticed this happening with my
unpackmaps script.

Which did strike me as a little wierd.  I was under the impression that
the maps were only going to be published once per month, but over the
few days that maps are coming in, unpackmaps typically finds 3-4 files
have already disappeared.  Often one or two a night (I run unpackmaps
once a day)

This is with both Cnews and Bnews.

>No mention in the news errlog or log files of anything in connection
>with the missing articles.  Since the article numbers appear in the batch file
>which is built by inews when he's unpacking and filing the articles, I have
>to assume they were there in the first place.  Boy, am I confused ;-) .

Take a look in the history file and see if you can identify it.
-- 
Chris Lewis,
clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca or ...uunet!mitel!cunews!latour!ecicrl!clewis
Psroff support: psroff-request@eci386.uucp, or call 613-832-0541 (Canada)
(If this message has a ".bitnet" return address, please send me a copy!)

karish@mindcraft.com (Chuck Karish) (03/19/91)

In article <807@essnj1.ESSNJAY.COM> smitty@essnj1.ESSNJAY.COM
(Hibbard T. Smith JR) writes:
>The news software builds a batch file of incoming uucp map article file names.
>When getmap runs (3 times a week), quite often I get errors from getmap 
>claiming that it can't open some article files.

Why spool these up?  I have an entry in my sys file that unpacks
maps as they arrive.  Whenever I run pathalias I know that it
has an up-to-date database to work on.

	Chuck Karish		karish@mindcraft.com
	Mindcraft, Inc.		(415) 323-9000