[news.admin] history.pag file

david@mmsac.UUCP (David L. Kensiski) (06/07/89)

Our history.pag file seems to be growing without bounds - it is larger
than the history file:

	mmsac# ls -l history*
	-rw-rw-rw-  1 news        10790 Jun  6 15:22 history
	-rw-rw-r--  1 news         4096 Jun  6 15:22 history.dir
	-rw-rw-r--  1 news      3488768 Jun  6 15:22 history.pag
	mmsac# 

Is something supposed to trim this file down automatically?  If so,
what?  If not, how shall I trim it manually?

David L. Kensiski -- KB6HCN                1772 Tribute Road
Martin Marietta Data Systems               Sacramento, CA 95815
UUCP: uunet.uu.com!mmsac!david             VOICE: (916) 929-8844
UUCP: sun.com!sacto!mmsac!david

david@mmsac.UUCP (David L. Kensiski) (06/09/89)

I thank everybody for their responses to my question about apparent
size of the history.pag file.  As it turns out, the file has holes in
it that are not allocated.  Guy Harris (auspex!guy@uunet.uu.net)
suggested I use the -s option to ls to see the actual number of blocks
taken up by the file.  Doing so revealed that history.pag is actually
smaller than the history file itself.

	mmsac# ls -ls history*
	 160 -rw-rw-r--  1 news       152123 Jun  8 09:52 history
	   4 -rw-rw-r--  1 news         4096 Jun  8 09:51 history.dir
	 136 -rw-rw-r--  1 news       131072 Jun  8 09:52 history.pag

Since mmsac is a Sun 3/110 and is running SunOS 4.0, it has the BSD
file system.  BSD 4.[23] and V7/S5 do not allocate space for files
with holes (sectors that are skipped over, but never written).  Thus,
the apparent size (ls -l) and the physical size (ls -ls) can differ.

Much thanks to Guy for his help.  (Also, thanks for clearing up my
email address problems!)

David L. Kensiski -- KB6HCN     Martin Marietta Data Systems
Software Engineer               1770 Tribute Road, upstairs
Phone: (916) 929-8844           Sacramento, CA 95815
UUCP: uunet!mmsac!david         INTERNET: mmsac!david@uunet.uu.net
UUCP: sun!sacto!mmsac!david     INTERNET: sacto!mmsac!david@sun.com