hankin@sauron.osf.org (Scott Hankin) (02/23/90)
Lately (since moving to 6.3.10?) I have noticed a discrepancy between
what nn tells me in terms of how many articles are in a given group,
and how many articles are actually available and accessible. Today I
noticed one group which supposedly had over 2000 articles, but I was
only shown about 40. nnadmin stated that it thought that there were
the larger number as well, but the data file had other ideas. I had to
recollect in order to get things to match up. This has happened
several times on many different groups. Can anyone shed some light on
this situation?
- Scott
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Scott Hankin (hankin@osf.org)
Open Software Foundationhankin@sauron.osf.org (Scott Hankin) (02/23/90)
Curiouser and curiouser. It seems that, on closer examination, many of
my data files are getting zeroed as well. What would cause this?
- Scott
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Scott Hankin (hankin@osf.org)
Open Software Foundationhankin@sauron.osf.org (Scott Hankin) (02/23/90)
The final straw! Doing a reinit of the entire database (an admittedly
tiresome and time consuming activity) does NOT restore these zeroed
data files! They must be recollected individually to restore them
completely. Now all I have to do is determine which data files contain
either no data (relatively easy) or less data than they should (can you
say, "Check each group manually in nnadmin?") What fun!
- Scott
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Scott Hankin (hankin@osf.org)
Open Software Foundationchuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (02/23/90)
hankin@sauron.osf.org (Scott Hankin) writes: > Curiouser and curiouser. It seems that, on closer examination, many of > my data files are getting zeroed as well. What would cause this? File system full? -- Chuq Von Rospach <+> chuq@apple.com <+> [This is myself speaking] I don't know what's scarier: President Reagan saying he had no inkling of his aides doing anything illegal, or an ex-president who uses the word inkling.
hankin@sauron.osf.org (Scott Hankin) (02/23/90)
chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: >hankin@sauron.osf.org (Scott Hankin) writes: >> Curiouser and curiouser. It seems that, on closer examination, many of >> my data files are getting zeroed as well. What would cause this? >File system full? No, plenty of space - I'm beginning to think I may back out of patch #10... - Scott ------------------------------ Scott Hankin (hankin@osf.org) Open Software Foundation
bob@csispt.UUCP (Bob Finch) (02/24/90)
hankin@sauron.osf.org (Scott Hankin) writes: > The final straw! Doing a reinit of the entire database (an admittedly > tiresome and time consuming activity) does NOT restore these zeroed > data files! They must be recollected individually to restore them > completely. About four weeks ago I encountered what sounds like the same problem after upgrading from 6.3.1 to 6.3.10. After initializing the entire database, about 10% of the data files were 0 length. Initializing again resulted in about the same number of 0 length data files, but in different groups. I spent about a day tracing through initializing the database in nnmaster with sdb, but I never caught it zeroing a data file. Since then, nnmaster has run without problems. I never found what caused the problem, and why it did not occur while running nnmaster under sdb. I suspect, however, that if I tried to reinitialize the database, the problems would reoccur. -- Bob Finch bob%csispt.UUCP@unicorn.wwu.edu AlphaSoft +1 (206) 671-6214
storm@texas.dk (Kim F. Storm) (02/27/90)
hankin@sauron.osf.org (Scott Hankin) writes: > The final straw! Doing a reinit of the entire database (an admittedly > tiresome and time consuming activity) does NOT restore these zeroed > data files! They must be recollected individually to restore them > completely. bob@csispt.UUCP (Bob Finch) writes: >About four weeks ago I encountered what sounds like the same problem >after upgrading from 6.3.1 to 6.3.10. After initializing the entire >database, about 10% of the data files were 0 length. Initializing >again resulted in about the same number of 0 length data files, but in >different groups. I have now heard of this problem from several sites who have upgraded to 6.3.10, and of course I am deeply worried about this, since I would very much like this problem to be fixed before release 6.4 goes out. Since the problem did not seem to occur with release 6.3.6, I have tried to backtrack what has changed from 6.3.6 to 6.3.10 in the way articles are collected. The strange thing is that except for fixing a few (very) minor bugs, nothing has changed -- except the nntp module which was rewritten for the unofficial release 6.3.7 (and still is used in 6.4). I therefore have to conclude that this is a problem with NNTP, but I really do not understand why! The changes we made to nntp.c in 6.3.7 was aimed at NOT losing articles which could occur with the old code if the server died. So in our attempts to make things better, they may have become worse! I have had indications that NNTP is indeed the cause of the problems, and the reason being that the NNTP server was sending empty files to the client (i.e. nnmaster) or maybe the client (nnmaster) somehow truncated the files itself (Don't know which). I don't know whether this is the only/real cause of the problems. The nntp module explicitly makes a check for empty articles, and treats it as a non-existing article; maybe that is the problem? If the nntp server says that the article is indeed there, but it is empty, then maybe the client should try to fetch it again? Somebody also told me that nn does not work with NNTP 1.5.7, but I have not heard of these problems since, so I don't know whether it is true or not! Maybe this could be (part of) the explanation? I would really like to collect some exact information about this problem. I you have installed 6.3.7 or later, would you please send me the following information - also if you have NOT seen the above problem: ------------------- CUT HERE and RETURN TO ME ------------------- TICK IF YES: ( ) Have you seen the "zero files" problem? ( ) Do you use NNTP 1.5.5 ? ( ) Do you use NNTP 1.5.7 ? ( ) If either is yes, does the master access news via NNTP? ( ) Do you use NFS? ( ) If yes, does the database reside on the machine where the master runs? ( ) Do you have NETWORK_DATABASE defined? PLEASE SPECIFY: Release: nn 6.3.__ Operating System: s- file used: Hardware: m- file used: COMMENTS/OBSERVATIONS YOU THINK MIGHT BE USEFUL: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you -- Kim F. Storm storm@texas.dk Tel +45 429 174 00 Texas Instruments, Marielundvej 46E, DK-2730 Herlev, Denmark No news is good news, but nn is better!