stealth@caen.engin.umich.edu (Mike Pelletier) (07/10/90)
Every time I run expire via "doexpire -v" on srvr1, my news server, I get the following error output: > Date: Mon, 9 Jul 90 14:23:28 EDT > From: news@srvr1.engin.umich.edu (CAEN Netnews) > Message-Id: <9007091823.AA29796@srvr1.engin.umich.edu> > Apparently-To: usenet > Status: R > > expire problems: > expire: wrong number of fields in `...' > expire: bad return from doline(): `' > Currently I'm stumped as to where the source of this problem is. My best guess is that it's coming from the history file, but I'm not really sure how to proceed. Any suggestions? Thanks! -- Michael V. Pelletier | "We live our lives with our hands on the CAEN UseNet News Administrator | rear-view mirror, striving to get a better Systems Group Programmer | view of the road behind us. Imagine what's | possible if we look ahead and steer..."
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (07/10/90)
In article <1990Jul9.183558.287@caen.engin.umich.edu> stealth@caen.engin.umich.edu (Mike Pelletier) writes: >> expire: wrong number of fields in `...' >> expire: bad return from doline(): `' > >Currently I'm stumped as to where the source of this problem is... You've got a blank line in your history file. The problem is being compounded slightly by a bug in expire's error handling. The fix is to go find the messed-up line(s) in your history file, and either tidy them up or get rid of them. -- NFS is a wonderful advance: a Unix | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology filesystem with MSDOS semantics. :-( | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) (07/12/90)
>>> expire: wrong number of fields in `...' >>> expire: bad return from doline(): `' >> >>Currently I'm stumped as to where the source of this problem is... > >You've got a blank line in your history file. The problem is being >compounded slightly by a bug in expire's error handling. > >The fix is to go find the messed-up line(s) in your history file, >and either tidy them up or get rid of them. Won't this blow away the dbm stuff? I thought the only safe thing to do was rebuild the history files from scratch when things got messed up. (?) -- Richard Foulk richard@pegasus.com
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (07/12/90)
In article <1990Jul12.062819.20760@pegasus.com> richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) writes: >>The fix is to go find the messed-up line(s) in your history file, >>and either tidy them up or get rid of them. > >Won't this blow away the dbm stuff? I thought the only safe thing >to do was rebuild the history files from scratch when things got >messed up. (?) Mm, I should have mentioned this. You can rebuild the dbm/dbz database without having to rebuild the history file from scratch. At the moment (this is subject to change), the procedure is to lock the news system (e.g. with locknews), cd /usr/lib/news, and "mkdbm history". (Mkdbm can be found in /usr/lib/newsbin/expire, if nowhere else.) -- NFS: all the nice semantics of MSDOS, | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology and its performance and security too. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry