alan@essex.ac.uk (Stanier A) (06/16/89)
In the 4 months we have been running news, we have received 7873 articles for soc.culture.china, and over 5000 for several other newsgroups. If the traffic continues at that rate, then in 4 years the article numbers will exceed 99999 - and larger than the active file seems to take. We are curious about what happens then. I guess that sites who have run news for longer than we have will have reached this point: what happens, please? Alan M Stanier copyright 1989 A M Stanier email alan@essex.ac.uk This article may be redistributed for profit only tel +44 206-872153 if such profit is returned to Dr Alan M Stanier, FAX +44 206-860585 University of Essex, Colchester CO4 3SQ, England
geoff@utstat.uucp (Geoff Collyer) (06/17/89)
Luxury. We have articles locally with numbers above 37000. Long-time major news relays can expect to exceed 99999 sooner than four years from now. When article numbers exceed 99999, I believe B news will not be prepared and will misbehave (it might start over at 0). The news readers we examined don't seem to care about the size the article numbers, so I just added five zeroes to the front of each article number in the active file and tweaked C news to cope by using as many digits as are present in the active file, and by complaining and quitting if there aren't enough digitis for the next article number. -- Geoff Collyer utzoo!utstat!geoff, geoff@utstat.toronto.edu ``... skill such as yours is evidence of a misspent youth.'' - Herbert Spencer