rmg@ultra.com (Rich Geiger) (12/08/89)
Having recently acquired a news feed, I would now like to take advantage of the uucp map distribution in comp.mail.maps. I am wondering about the best way to automatically keep the directory with the pathalias input files (~uucp/uumap) up to date based on the revolving updates in comp.mail.maps. Actually, it would be easy for me to write a script that just unpacks one of the maps into ~uucp/uumap whenever it sees one in comp.mail.maps which is newer than the one in ~uucp/uumap... EXCEPT THAT: it appears that large sub-maps, for example u.usa.ca, are broken into several sequentially numbered chunks (u.usa.ca.1, u.usa.ca.2, u.usa.ca.3, .....). Now, if the dividing points between the chunks change based from month to month, then approach of just replacing ~uucp/uumap/u.usa.ca.N when the article with a new u.usa.ca.N arrives won't work. For example in January u.foo.1 has entries for a-m, and u.foo.2 for n-z, and then in February, then number of uucp sites registered in fooland explodes, and there are now chunks u.foo.1 (a-h), u.foo.2 (i-p), and u.foo.3 (q-z). Suppose that for some reason, our site gets the posting to update u.foo.1 BEFORE getting the other two chunks. If we were to update our uumap directory at this point, we'd have an invalid map. Now, I don't know much about how the chunks are divided up, but it seems that the above problem would be inevitable in any situation where the _number_ of chunk comprising a giving sub-map changes. What's more, I can't find any indication in the article header hinting at the total number of chunks for the submap in "this month's" distribution... or did I miss it? So, what's the civilized way to handle this? -- - Rich Geiger Disclaimer: It's _all_ Rock 'N Roll to him! Ultra Network Technologies / 101 Daggett Drive / San Jose CA 95134 rmg@ultra.com ...!ames!ultra!rmg (408) 922-0100 [w] (408) 739-7911 [h]