[comp.os.vms] Too many messages?

graham@DRCVAX.ARPA (09/21/87)

>     Come on people!  I logged on today [Monday] and had 158 mail message
>85% of which were info-vax... 

Hmmmmmm, I logged in this morning [Monday] and had 89, 43 of which were 
info-vax.  I ftp'd the current archive file and found I had all of them.
You must have a triplicating mailer.

>     I realize that we all think our own problems are important.  Also, 
>please note that I'm not trying to discourage legitimate questions.  BUT 
>PLEASE, can we lower the traffic here...

I agree that there have been a few rather inane or trite questions here,
but the VAST majority are indeed legitimate.  There are few, if any VAX
questions which are unique.  I find that at least 60% of the questions are
ones I've either had, have, or anticipate having. 

Sometimes the volume does get a little hectic.  I offer the following 
suggestions:

1.  All contributers should use a good subject line.  (They have been MUCH 
    better as of late.)

2.  Someone, (I know, me, because I am bringing it up...) could write a 
    little DCL or program that would take a mail EXTRACT/ALL file and scan the 
    subject lines, letting you know just what's of interest.  The program could 
    be further enhanced to delete the ones not wanted, perhaps via some SMG$ 
    screen manipulation.

--Dan Graham
GRAHAM@DRCVAX.ARPA

Vini, Vidi, Hacki
------

haug%vax.runit.unit.uninett@TOR.NTA.NO.UUCP (09/24/87)

>>     Come on people!  I logged on today [Monday] and had 158 mail message
>>85% of which were info-vax... 
>
>Hmmmmmm, I logged in this morning [Monday] and had 89, 43 of which were 
>info-vax.  I ftp'd the current archive file and found I had all of them.
>You must have a triplicating mailer.

Please accept my word that duplicate messages is a REAL problem for some of us.

There are obviously SOME mailers that are duplicating messages (AND/OR we
have loops in the network); I believe we've had this discussion in INFO-VAX
several times before. The amount of duplicate messages is at times incredible,
and I have NO PROBLEM believing that one user has received 43 messages from
INFO-VAX over the weekend while another has received 134. If the problem was
simply that MY mailer was the culprit then I'd know where to start looking.
But it isn't, unfortunately.

On the path from the originator of a message to INFO-VAX and my node (in
Trondheim, Norway) there are MANY links, MANY "exploding" mailers, and
often SEVERAL gateways involved. Any of these is a possible culprit. If
I really started digging into the mail headers I might be able to figure
out part of what's happening. As of now I don't have time for this work;
I can only note that SOMETHING is malfunctioning and I'm fairly confident
that the problem is in more than one place.

(I won't even mention the FLOOD of error messages I receive each time I
send a message to INFO-VAX. I believe we've gone over this before also :-)

Steinar Haug
Database Research Group
Computing Center at the University of Trondheim
7034 Trondheim, NORWAY

E-mail:  haug%vax.runit.unit.uninett@nta-vax.arpa
    or:  steinar@nta-vax.arpa
or even: steinar@tor.nta.no
for those with updated host tables :-)