jjhnsn@ut-ngp.UUCP (03/09/84)
[first line]
I am responding to the following articles:
1 werner@ut-ngp.UUCP Tue Feb 21 05:29 "? how to keep .newsrc clean ?"
2 mp@whuxle.UUCP Tue Feb 28 09:25 "duplicate lines in active"
3 fair@dual.UUCP Thu Mar 1 02:05 "Re: duplicate lines in active"
4 neal@denelcor.UUCP Thu Mar 8 16:58 "Re: ? how to keep .newsrc cle"
If you notice duplicates in your .newsrc file, you should notify
you system news person, as there are duplicates in the
news/active file also. Duplicate entries in the news/active file
can be deleted if they have a zero article count. The next
time you readnews, your .newsrc file will be corrected. Neal
Weidner is right when he says that sorting your .newsrc file will
only confuse readnews. Deleting .newsrc entries is
futile; Readnews will put the entry back in next time. The
modifications that you can make to your .newsrc file are:
1. add an options line
2. change a : to a ! to unsubscribe to a group
3. change a ! to a : to resubscribe to a group
4. edit the "articles read" list for a group
Since we caused Werner's original problem, I thought I would explain
what happened. The problem originated because, as Mark Plotnicks noted,
we deleted our usr/spool/news directories. This was done as an
emergency measure to get UT-NGP back up when the usr file system filled
up. Because we have AUTONEWNG turned on, the directories were recreated
as news came in (see Erik Fair's article). Up to that point everything
was ok except that there were lots of duplicate entries at the end of
the news/active file. The first entry was used to keep the article
count; No problem yet.
The problem starts with readnews. It uses the news/active file as a
template for the user's local .newsrc file. Since the news/active file
had duplicates, it put them in the .newsrc file also. Unfortunately, it
seems to use the first entry to determine which articles have been read,
but it updates the second entry when you quit.
James Lee Johnson, U.T. Computation Center, Austin, Texas 78712
ARPA: jjhnsn@ut-ngp
UUCP: {ihnp4,seismo,kpno,ctvax}!ut-sally!ut-ngp!jjhnsn