msb@sq.uucp (Mark Brader) (01/14/89)
In the past, oh I don't know, maybe a week or maybe more like 3 weeks, I've seen a fair number of mildly corrupted articles on the net. As nobody else has complained, I have finally realized must be local in scope. Well, now I have just checked one such article on a nearby site and found it to be okay, which not only confirms the guess that the problem is local, but comes close to pinpointing it. Maybe I should have sent mail, but I don't think it's terribly wrong to post this to tor.news. If others have seen these articles, they may be wondering. The article I checked has Message-Id "<34476@bbn.COM>" and Subject "CALL FOR VOTES: proposed newsgroup soc.couples". It was posted to the following 8 (!) newsgroups: news.groups, news.misc, soc.misc, soc.motss, soc.singles, soc.men, soc.women, misc.kids, and alt.sex. The corruption consists of the insertion of a few bytes of binary garbage just below the last header line and before the beginning of the article body. This displays in a harmless fashion in rn, but it is a nuisance. On the message in question, the added bytes are (in octal): 001 131 271 012 015 016 066 036 327 006 077 173 017 360 376 266 This doesn't ring any bells with me [no 007's in there, you see :-)]. Now, the article was okay on lsuc, which got it direct from attcan. This machine, sq, got it through the path attcan!utzoo!mnetor!geac!sq. Our news transport software has been unchanged for months. So could the admins at those sites see what they can see, please? Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto "Suspicion breeds confidence." utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com -- BRAZIL
bob@attcan.UUCP (Bob Kyryliuk) (01/14/89)
In article <1989Jan14.015454.2767@sq.uucp> msb@sq.com (Mark Brader) writes: >In the past, oh I don't know, maybe a week or maybe more like 3 weeks, >I've seen a fair number of mildly corrupted articles on the net. >... >Maybe I should have sent >mail, but I don't think it's terribly wrong to post this to tor.news. Seems like an appropriate place to post it, as this is discussing a possible problem with news in the toronto area :-) >The article I checked has Message-Id "<34476@bbn.COM>" and Subject "CALL >FOR VOTES: proposed newsgroup soc.couples". It was posted to the following >8 (!) newsgroups: news.groups, news.misc, soc.misc, soc.motss, soc.singles, >soc.men, soc.women, misc.kids, and alt.sex. > >The corruption consists of the insertion of a few bytes of binary garbage >just below the last header line and before the beginning of the article >body. I've checked the file, and on attcan, it has 9 links to each of the appropriate newsgroups. The file itself does not have the binary garbage described. >Now, the article was okay on lsuc, which got it direct from attcan. >This machine, sq, got it through the path attcan!utzoo!mnetor!geac!sq. >Our news transport software has been unchanged for months. So could the >admins at those sites see what they can see, please? > >Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto "Suspicion breeds confidence." >utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com -- BRAZIL As the article was fine on lsuc which got it from us, it's not surprising that it is still fine on attcan. The problem must have developed either in the transfer to utzoo, or further down the path. Hope this helps. Regards, Bob -- =============================================================================== ____ _______ _____ _______ ------- Bob Kyryliuk / __ \ |__ __| / _ \ |__ __| -====------ Manager, Special Projects | (__) | | | \ \ \_\ | | -======------ National Technical Support | __ | | | / \ __ | | --====------- AT&T Canada Inc. | | | | | | | (\ / / | | ----------- |_| |_| |_| \_____/ |_| ------- (416) 756-5183 AT&T MAIL: ..!attmail!bkyryliuk UUCP:{attmail|uunet|utzoo}!attcan!bob
jmm@ecijmm.UUCP (John Macdonald) (01/15/89)
In article <1989Jan14.015454.2767@sq.uucp> msb@sq.com (Mark Brader) writes: >... >The article I checked has Message-Id "<34476@bbn.COM>" and Subject "CALL >FOR VOTES: proposed newsgroup soc.couples". It was posted to the following >8 (!) newsgroups: news.groups, news.misc, soc.misc, soc.motss, soc.singles, >soc.men, soc.women, misc.kids, and alt.sex. > >... It came here successfully, using the path ...!lsuc!ecicrl!ecijmm Thus, it is getting out of lsuc without error in at least this path. You'll have to check the rest of the path between to you from lsuc. -- John Macdonald
rae@geaclib.UUCP (Reid Ellis) (01/16/89)
msb@sq.com (Mark Brader) writes: |In the past, oh I don't know, maybe a week or maybe more like 3 weeks, |I've seen a fair number of mildly corrupted articles on the net. I noticed a number of articles as described over the past weeks, but they seemed to die away. |Now, the article was okay on lsuc, which got it direct from attcan. |This machine, sq, got it through the path attcan!utzoo!mnetor!geac!sq. I checked the mentioned articled and it was corrupt. The path was "geaclib!geac!mnetor!utzoo!attcan...", so the scope now narrows to somewhere in the geac--mnetor--utzoo path. -- Reid Ellis geaclib!rae@geac.uucp
eric@geac.UUCP (Eric Dirks) (01/16/89)
In article <1989Jan14.015454.2767@sq.uucp> msb@sq.com (Mark Brader) writes: >In the past, oh I don't know, maybe a week or maybe more like 3 weeks, > >The corruption consists of the insertion of a few bytes of binary garbage Sounds like a printf of a null pointer or something like that. I will check the software here. >Now, the article was okay on lsuc, which got it direct from attcan. >This machine, sq, got it through the path attcan!utzoo!mnetor!geac!sq. >Our news transport software has been unchanged for months. So could the >admins at those sites see what they can see, please? Well it is corrupt on geac. So the utzoo!mnetor!geac path is still suspect. I have occasionally seen articles of the form you mentioned but did not think too much about the problem. I will check into it here but it would be nice to know if it is ok on mnetor. If you could find another corrupt article that got here (geac) via another path, that would help too. -- Eric Dirks Geac Computer Corporation, Markham, Ontario eric@geac {uunet!mnetor,yunexus,utgpu}!geac!eric
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (01/16/89)
In article <3749@attcan.UUCP> bob@attcan.UUCP (Bob Kyryliuk) writes: >>The article I checked has Message-Id "<34476@bbn.COM>" and Subject "CALL >>FOR VOTES: proposed newsgroup soc.couples". It was posted to the following >>8 (!) newsgroups: news.groups, news.misc, soc.misc, soc.motss, soc.singles, >>soc.men, soc.women, misc.kids, and alt.sex. >> >>The corruption consists of the insertion of a few bytes of binary garbage >>just below the last header line and before the beginning of the article >>body. > ... >... The problem must have developed either >in the transfer to utzoo, or further down the path. It's clean on utzoo. -- "God willing, we will return." | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology -Eugene Cernan, the Moon, 1972 | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
ron@mnetor.UUCP (Ron Miller) (01/17/89)
In article <2874@utzoo.uucp>, henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >In article <3749@attcan.UUCP> bob@attcan.UUCP (Bob Kyryliuk) writes: >>>The article I checked has Message-Id "<34476@bbn.COM>" and Subject "CALL >>>FOR VOTES: proposed newsgroup soc.couples". It was posted to the following >>>8 (!) newsgroups: news.groups, news.misc, soc.misc, soc.motss, soc.singles, >>>soc.men, soc.women, misc.kids, and alt.sex. >>> >>>The corruption consists of the insertion of a few bytes of binary garbage >>>just below the last header line and before the beginning of the article >>>body. >> ... >>... The problem must have developed either >>in the transfer to utzoo, or further down the path. > > It's clean on utzoo. It's clean on mnetor too. -- Ron Miller UUCP: {utzoo|uunet}!mnetor!ron ARPA: ron%mnetor.uucp@uunet.uu.net BELL: +1 416 475 8980 ext. 313
eric@geac.UUCP (Eric Dirks) (01/18/89)
In article <4821@mnetor.UUCP> ron@mnetor.UUCP (Ron Miller) writes: >In article <2874@utzoo.uucp>, henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >>In article <3749@attcan.UUCP> bob@attcan.UUCP (Bob Kyryliuk) writes: >>>>The article I checked has Message-Id "<34476@bbn.COM>" and Subject "CALL >> It's clean on utzoo. >It's clean on mnetor too. This means that there are problems in the mnetor->geac link. I would like to know if it is only articles we get from mnetor that are affected. Has anyone found any problems with articles that have not passed through via mnetor->geac path. (eg yunexus->geac-> ...) Does anyone know of an easy way of locating these corrupt files? I don't think grep accepts control characters. -- Eric Dirks Geac Computer Corporation, Markham, Ontario eric@geac {uunet!mnetor,yunexus,utgpu}!geac!eric
msb@sq.uucp (Mark Brader) (01/25/89)
Eric Dirks writes: > I think I have fixed the problem. As the person who reported it originally, I guess I'm the one who should say thank you. Thank you! Mark Brader "Exercise 5-3: ... When should you SoftQuad Inc., Toronto have stopped adding features...?" utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com -- Kernighan & Pike
eric@geac.UUCP (Eric Dirks) (01/25/89)
In article <4821@mnetor.UUCP> ron@mnetor.UUCP (Ron Miller) writes: >In article <2874@utzoo.uucp>, henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >>In article <3749@attcan.UUCP> bob@attcan.UUCP (Bob Kyryliuk) writes: >>>>The article I checked has Message-Id "<34476@bbn.COM>" and Subject "CALL >>>>FOR VOTES: proposed newsgroup soc.couples". It was posted to the following >>>>8 (!) newsgroups: news.groups, news.misc, soc.misc, soc.motss, soc.singles, >>>>soc.men, soc.women, misc.kids, and alt.sex. >>>>The corruption consists of the insertion of a few bytes of binary garbage >>>>just below the last header line and before the beginning of the article >>>>body. I think I have fixed the problem (let me know if you spot it again). As far as I can tell it was a pointer overrun when creating the Xrefs header. This header is created by inews which appends each cross posted newsgroup name to the header until all the names are listed (regardless of buffer size!!). This is only a problem for sites where both SMALL_ADDRESS_SPACE and DOXREFS are defined (I guess most sites with SMALL_ADDRESS_SPACE defined do not bother with the DOXREFS). As a result the only those few articles that are cross posted to a large number of groups were affected. I have increased the size of the Xrefs header so the problem should be fixed, unless someone cross posts to more than (approx) 19 newsgroups (in that case all sites that do Xref processing will have problems). Eric If it's not working, running it with the diagnostics will make it work fine. -- Eric Dirks Geac Computer Corporation, Markham, Ontario eric@geac {uunet!mnetor,yunexus,utgpu}!geac!eric