karl@sugar.uu.net (Karl Lehenbauer) (02/19/89)
The history file was 2.5 megabytes long. I did an expire -r -h -e14 -E28 ...and afterwards, the history file was only 750 Kbytes. An equivalent proportion of articles were not removed. The system is vanilla System V/3 (386), news 2.11 patchlevel 14, with John Zeeff's dbz routines. The question is: Is this normal? I can see how a dbm file would never shrink even with deletes, but since a normal expire rebuilds the history file anyway, the new history file shouldn't contain lots of deleted entries. -- -- uunet!sugar!karl | "Everyone has a purpose in life. Perhaps yours is -- karl@sugar.uu.net | watching television." -- David Letterman -- Usenet BBS (713) 438-5018
karl@dinosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) (02/20/89)
karl@sugar.uu.net (Karl Lehenbauer) writes:
The history file was 2.5 megabytes long. I did an
expire -r -h -e14 -E28
...and afterwards, the history file was only 750 Kbytes. An equivalent
proportion of articles were not removed.
This is normal. First, note that -r implies -h (see expire(8)).
Second, although you remove files after 2 weeks (-e14), you are
keeping history information for 4 weeks (-E24). When you rebuild from
scratch, the history information previously held for already-deleted
articles is lost.
--Karlzeeff@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us (Jon Zeeff) (02/20/89)
There is a bug in some of the '386 compilers that causes problems with news 2.11 when you define DBM. Have you applied a patch for this? -- Jon Zeeff zeeff@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us Ann Arbor, MI mailrus!b-tech!zeeff
bill@twwells.uucp (T. William Wells) (02/20/89)
In article <3456@sugar.uu.net> karl@sugar.uu.net (Karl Lehenbauer) writes:
: The history file was 2.5 megabytes long. I did an
:
: expire -r -h -e14 -E28
:
: ...and afterwards, the history file was only 750 Kbytes. An equivalent
: proportion of articles were not removed.
:
: The question is: Is this normal? I can see how a dbm file would never shrink
: even with deletes, but since a normal expire rebuilds the history file anyway,
: the new history file shouldn't contain lots of deleted entries.
Yes, this is normal. The news software keeps track of expired articles
for some time after they are gone; this helps prevent receipt and
transmission of duplicate articles. The info is kept in the history
file.
When you did the expire, all that additional information went away.
BTW, if you are a leaf node, you should not need to keep that
additional history.
---
Bill
{ uunet | novavax } !twwells!bill