bill@twwells.uucp (T. William Wells) (02/13/89)
I'm having a wierd problem with my news stuff. I'm running B 2.11,
patchlevel 14. I've got Microport's V/386 3.0e and am using Jon
Zeef's dbz routines.
I've set up a number of entries in my sys file to send things off to
various places. However, things sent to fl.maps (and apparently ONLY
to fl.maps) also get sent to some of these places. Here is my sys
file, with the lines folded (they are not like this in the file):
twwells:world,inet,net,mod,fl,na,usa,\
to.twwells,comp,news,sci,rec,misc,soc,talk,unix-pc,alt:U:
novavax:world,inet,net,mod,fl,na,usa,\
to,comp,news,sci,rec,misc,soc,talk,unix-pc,alt:U:
comparc:local,world,comp.archives:U:\
/usr/home/comparc/bin/comparcupd /usr/home/comparc/db
maps:world,inet,net,mod,fl,na,usa,comp.mail.maps:U:\
/usr/home/mail/bin/savemap
tomh:world,inet,net,mod,fl,na,usa,comp.ai.digest:U:\
/usr/bin/mail -s comp.ai.digest proxftl!tomh
tomh:world,inet,net,mod,fl,na,usa,comp.ai.neural-nets:U:\
/usr/bin/mail -s comp.ai.neural-nets proxftl!tomh
tomh:world,inet,net,mod,fl,na,usa,comp.theory.cell-automata:U:\
/usr/bin/mail -s comp.theory.cell-automata proxftl!tomh
tomh:world,inet,net,mod,fl,na,usa,comp.theory.dynamic-sys:U:\
/usr/bin/mail -s comp.theory.dynamic-sys proxftl!tomh
tomh:world,inet,net,mod,fl,na,usa,comp.theory.self-org-sys:U:\
/usr/bin/mail -s comp.theory.self-org-sys proxftl!tomh
tomh:world,inet,net,mod,fl,na,usa,comp.theory:U:
/usr/bin/mail -s comp.theory proxftl!tomh
The bogus entries are going to maps and to the first tomh entry (the
one for comp.ai.digest). Typical log entries look something like this
(also folded):
Feb 11 17:58 novavax received <990@novavax.UUCP>
ng fl.map subj 'map for aaahq01'
from map-request@novavax (UUCP Mapping Project)
Feb 11 17:58 novavax <990@novavax.UUCP> sent to maps, tomh
Feb 11 18:07 novavax received <1000@novavax.UUCP>
ng fl.announce,fl.map,fl.mail
subj 'd.* files are being phased out'
from mikel@novavax.UUCP (Mikel Manitius)
Feb 11 18:07 novavax <1000@novavax.UUCP> sent to maps, tomh
Now, before I go digging out my debugger, has anyone heard of this or
a related problem?
---
A trivial question (I hope): In
tomh:world,inet,net,mod,fl,na,usa,comp.theory.self-org-sys:U:\
/usr/bin/mail -s comp.theory.self-org-sys proxftl!tomh
tomh:world,inet,net,mod,fl,na,usa,comp.theory:U:
/usr/bin/mail -s comp.theory proxftl!tomh
the second line matches everything that the first lines does, right?
And, the only reason tomh doesn't see duplicates is that they both
have the system name tomh, right? This, of course, causes some wasted
processing; would the correct way to eliminate this be to replace the
last line with something like:
tomh:world,inet,net,mod,fl,na,usa,comp.theory,!comp.theory.all:U:
/usr/bin/mail -s comp.theory proxftl!tomh
? (BTW, I'm not worried about CPU time, but disk accesses. I've a
vastly overpowered CPU compared to my disk.)
---
Bill
{ uunet!proxftl | novavax } !twwells!billnagel@paris.ics.uci.edu (Mark Nagel) (02/13/89)
In article <376@twwells.uucp>, bill@twwells (T. William Wells) writes: |I'm having a wierd problem with my news stuff. I'm running B 2.11, |patchlevel 14. I've got Microport's V/386 3.0e and am using Jon |Zeef's dbz routines. [description of problem -- see original article] The cause of this arises from the fact that newsgroup names/hierarchies and regional distribution names have no distinction in the news software. I.e., naming 'fl' as a distribution implied to the news software that you mean to send all news for fl.all to the sites containing that entry in your sys file. It is smart enough to know that it should send it to each site only once, however, so it only sends it to the first one in the sys file. All other distributions you listed have no top-level hierarchy counterparts, so they never caused any problems. A solution is to change 'fl' in the tomh entries to 'fl,!fl.all' (I haven't tested this, so it may be a little bit different, but this is the general idea). Mark Nagel @ UC Irvine, Dept of Info and Comp Sci ARPA: nagel@ics.uci.edu | Charisma doesn't have jelly in the UUCP: {sdcsvax,ucbvax}!ucivax!nagel | middle. -- Jim Ignatowski
bill@twwells.uucp (T. William Wells) (02/16/89)
In article <376@twwells.uucp> I wrote:
: I'm having a wierd problem with my news stuff. I'm running B 2.11,
: patchlevel 14. I've got Microport's V/386 3.0e and am using Jon
: Zeef's dbz routines.
Well, as the saying goes: That's not a bug, that's a feature!
To the curious out there: the "bug" is caused by inews not
distinguishing between distributions and newsgroups.
SO, when something gets posted to fl.whatever, it also goes to any sys
line wherever there is a distribution of "fl". The fix is also
simple; add !fl.all to the lines where the "fl" is a distribution
instead of a newsgroup, or remove the fl distribution from the sys
lines that don't need it.
I'm also feeling a little red-faced about this: now that it has been
pointed out to me, I remember a discussion of just this point only a
few months ago....
---
Bill
{ uunet!proxftl | novavax } !twwells!bill