[news.admin] How do I do "sendme"?

rns@se-sd.sandiego.NCR.COM (Rick Schubert) (05/21/88)

(I hope this is the right newsgroup for this plea for help)

We have lost a large (~1000) news articles because we ran out of
file system space (we have had the same problem in the past from
running out of inodes due to an OS bug, but the file system exhausted
was real -- we received a large volume of backlogged news articles).

The symptom is that the file for the article has size 0.  By looking for
files of size 0 and comparing this with the history file, I have been
able to determine the message-ids of the lost articles (also the newgroups,
if these are necessary).

I was told that the way to have these articles re-sent is to send a "sendme"
control message.  I have found practically no information on "sendme", but
by piecing things together, I have come up with the following approximation:

	/usr/lib/news/inews -c sendme <<EOF
	162@checkers.UUCP
	375@cloud9.UUCP
	377@cloud9.UUCP
		.
		.
		.
	543@utacs.UTA.FI
	EOF

When I execute this, I get the error message:

	inews: sendme: Can't find sys record for

What am I doing wrong?  Am I even close?  Thanks in advance.

P.S.  Is there a way in the future to avoid the problem to begin with?
i.e. can the news software be set up to detect that the articles are
not being received properly (open fails for inode problem; write fails
for disk-space problem) and have them retransmitted them later?

Thanks again.

-- Rick Schubert (rns@se-sd.sandiego.NCR.COM)

mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack) (05/23/88)

In article <1523@se-sd.sandiego.NCR.COM> rns@se-sd.sandiego.NCR.COM (Rick Schubert) writes:
>(I hope this is the right newsgroup for this plea for help)
>
>We have lost a large (~1000) news articles because we ran out of
>file system space (we have had the same problem in the past from
>running out of inodes due to an OS bug, but the file system exhausted
>was real -- we received a large volume of backlogged news articles).
>
>The symptom is that the file for the article has size 0.  By looking for
>files of size 0 and comparing this with the history file, I have been
>able to determine the message-ids of the lost articles (also the newgroups,
>if these are necessary).
>
>I was told that the way to have these articles re-sent is to send a "sendme"
>control message.  I have found practically no information on "sendme", but
>by piecing things together, I have come up with the following approximation:
>
>	/usr/lib/news/inews -c sendme <<EOF
>	162@checkers.UUCP
>	375@cloud9.UUCP
>	377@cloud9.UUCP
>		.
>		.
>		.
>	543@utacs.UTA.FI
>	EOF
>
>When I execute this, I get the error message:
>
>	inews: sendme: Can't find sys record for
>
>What am I doing wrong?  Am I even close?  Thanks in advance.
>
>P.S.  Is there a way in the future to avoid the problem to begin with?
>i.e. can the news software be set up to detect that the articles are
>not being received properly (open fails for inode problem; write fails
>for disk-space problem) and have them retransmitted them later?
>
>Thanks again.
>
>-- Rick Schubert (rns@se-sd.sandiego.NCR.COM)

Geoff Kuenning posted the following article in response to a similar
problem a few months back. This script has saved my posterior every
time I've run out of inodes. You'll have to hack it a bit for your
site. Also, you'll have to make sure that the bad files are eliminated
from your history file, or the retransmitted articles will get clobbered
when they come in.

Geoff's article:

Try the following script, which is used as:

    askfor site-name < list-of-article-id's

For example, when all the i-nodes magically disappear on my news partition
(a weird problem that only affects that partition), I run the following
command:

    egrep 'No space' /usr/lib/news/errlog | cut -f2 | askfor trwrb

The script runs for quite a while because it posts lots of articles
to control (even though it does batch ID's as much as it thinks it can),
so you should run it in background.

	Geoff Kuenning   geoff@ITcorp.com   {uunet,trwrb}!desint!geoff

P.S.  For BSD sites, xargs is being used here to group article ID's into
lines of 60 characters.  You can do the same thing with awk or directly
in the shell, or you cn try to get xargs from the net.
-----------cut here, and don't forget my signature at the end!------------
: Use /bin/sh
#
# $Header$
#
# $Log$
#
#	Ask a news neighbor for specific articles.
#
#	Usage:
#
#	askfor dest-site < list-of-article-ids
OURSITE=`uname -n`
INEWS=/usr/lib/news/inews

case $# in
    1) ;;
    *)
	echo 'Usage:  askfor dest-site < list-of-article-ids' 1>&2
	exit 1
	;;
esac

DEST=$1
TMP=/tmp/askfor$$
trap "/bin/rm ${TMP}?; exit 1" 1 2 15
echo 'Thank you' > ${TMP}a
xargs -s60 echo > ${TMP}b
while read arts
do
    $INEWS -n to.$DEST -t "cmsg sendme $arts $OURSITE" < ${TMP}a
done < ${TMP}b
/bin/rm ${TMP}?
exit
-- 
	Geoff Kuenning   geoff@ITcorp.com   {uunet,trwrb}!desint!geoff

-- 
  Dave Mack, Archbishop-in-Hiding, First Unnatural Church of Klortho
  A man whose opinions diverge radically from those of the corporation
  (nameless now forevermore) which pays him to perform rites and rituals
  beyond the comprehension of mortal man. 
  "By the Holy Claws of Klortho the Magnificent, this is indeed a fine
  morning."

tim@introl.uucp (Tim Chase) (05/25/88)

>In article <1523@se-sd.sandiego.NCR.COM> rns@se-sd.sandiego.NCR.COM (Rick Schubert) writes:
	[ stuff ]
>>	/usr/lib/news/inews -c sendme <<EOF
>>	162@checkers.UUCP
>>	375@cloud9.UUCP
>>	377@cloud9.UUCP
>>		.
>>	543@utacs.UTA.FI
>>	EOF
>>
>>When I execute this, I get the error message:
>>
>>	inews: sendme: Can't find sys record for
>>
>>What am I doing wrong?  Am I even close?  Thanks in advance.

Yes, you are pretty close.  This method is superior to the "askfor" script
that has been posted.  It is possible, however, that this method was
added to later versions of inews.  A command like:

/usr/lib/news/inews -c "sendme mysysname" -n to.theirsystame < data

should work.  "mysysname" is name of your system, the "-n" argument
should be a group that you send to your feed's system and
"data" should contain a list of article-ids.

The error message "Can't find sys record..." is telling you that it
can't find the specified system in your sys file (a null name in
this case).

UUCP: {uunet,uwvax!uwmcsd1}!marque!dworld!introl!tim
Phone: +1 414 276-2937