mhw@wittsend.lbp.harris.com (Michael H. Warfield) (10/12/89)
This may have already have been discussed but...... I have seen several articles relating to weird article numbers being generated after installing B news 2.11 PL 18. The answers are invariable that the "active" file has not been updated. Well it appears that the installation of 2.11 PL 18 on new systems can do this. I recently upgraded some systems to 2.11 PL 18 and everything worked great. I then installed 2.11 PL 18 on some new systems and immediately had problems. I started getting "ng bad size" messages from inews and the article numbers started their weird dance as if I had a pre-PL18 active file and hadn't run "make update". What I discovered is that if you had an active file, "make update" will correctly update the format of the file for you. With a new installation, "make update" does not find an existing active file. He then generates a new active file for you, IN THE WRONG FORMAT! It works if you build the system with the following sequence: make all make install make update make update The first "make update" creates the initial configuration files, including the incorrectly formated active file. The second "make update" corrects the incorrect active file format. Is this a bug or just a case of "operator head space". I scanned the installation documentation and didn't see anything obvious that I was doing wrong. On top of that, the "update" installation on existing systems works like a charm! Michael H. Warfield (The Mad Wizard) | gatech.edu!galbp!wittsend!mhw (404) 270-2123 / 270-2098 | mhw@wittsend.LBP.HARRIS.COM An optimist believes we live in the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is sure of it!
randy@artech.UUCP (Randy Burt) (10/13/89)
mhw@wittsend.lbp.harris.com (Michael H. Warfield) writes: > I recently upgraded some systems to 2.11 PL 18 and everything worked > great. I then installed 2.11 PL 18 on some new systems and immediately had > problems. I started getting "ng bad size" messages from inews and the > article numbers started their weird dance as if I had a pre-PL18 active > file and hadn't run "make update". What I discovered is that if you had > an active file, "make update" will correctly update the format of the file > for you. With a new installation, "make update" does not find an existing > active file. He then generates a new active file for you, > IN THE WRONG FORMAT! I just installed news earlier this week and ran into the same problem. It appears to be a bug in the file makeactive.sh. In the following lines, the active numbers in the sed line are five digits long when they should be seven: : if active file is empty, create it if test ! -s $LIBDIR/active then sed 's/[ ].*/ 00000 00001/' /tmp/$$groups > $LIBDIR/active cat <<'E_O_F' >>$LIBDIR/active control 0000000 0000000 junk 0000000 0000000 E_O_F set - group 0 1 else I am new to the net, and did not know who to send the bug to. Note that control and junk are correct. Randy Burt hp-sdd!artech!randy