thlayli@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Lord Thlayli Merriadoc Valentine of Kalakiryande) (02/20/91)
My BBS, Milliways IIN (213) 559-8723, is running an ACOS-based (though loosely) similar-to-GBBS style mail program. I would think it likely that a GBBS programmer would be able to understand my problem, so listen up... The mail file is taking over Los Angeles. The thing was born at less than 20 blocks, and now is over 260. It is rapidly swallowing all the space I have, yet the amount of letters actively online is more or less the same as it's ever been .. How would you explain this? I am under the assumption that I'm going to have to manually dredge out all the active letters and transfer them to a new, small mailfile. I'm only running 160 users or so; what's the matter with my system? Old letters *appear* to be deleted, but the file just gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger...
toddpw@nntp-server.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel) (02/20/91)
How are you deleting messages? You have to delete a file before it's space is freed, but overwriting from the beginning re-uses the blocks that are already allocated for the file. If your mail file is constantly growing then you must be writing stuff onto the end and never purging the dead messages from disk -- maybe from your own data structure but prodos only frees disk blocks when you delete a file completely. I need to know more about how your Prodos routines work before I can make any intelligent guesses as to what's wrong... Todd Whitesel toddpw @ tybalt.caltech.edu
greg@hoss.unl.edu (Lig Lury Jr.) (02/22/91)
... toddpw@nntp-server.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel) writes: >How are you deleting messages? You have to delete a file before it's >space is freed, but overwriting from the beginning re-uses the blocks that >are already allocated for the file. >If your mail file is constantly growing then you must be writing stuff >onto the end and never purging the dead messages from disk -- maybe from your >own data structure but prodos only frees disk blocks when you delete a file >completely. >I need to know more about how your Prodos routines work before I can make >any intelligent guesses as to what's wrong... It sounds like he's running the standard mail configuration which has one file MAIL which is shared by all users. It can be thought of as a random-access file with record size of 4K. Each user has their mail stored in the appropriate record by user number. However if you try to CRUNCH the mail file it will repack the file, but you lose the numbering scheme. There are two ways of handling this problem. You can use one of the message file packers which will automatically create a new message file and copy all the messages from the old file to the new, or you can change your mail configuration so that each user has their own mail file, like MAIL.un where un is the user number. Then you can CRUNCH all you like, and actually delete the mail file when they've read their mail, and you'll get your disk space back. (When I first did the first one, the file was reduced from 200 blocks to 20.) Message files are the thing ACOS really has going for it. The problem is the design of the MSG.SEG.S which handles both mail and bulletins. The mail system is designed badly, and the file is simply too big -- I suggest users split the file into two called MAIL.SEG.S and BULLETINS.SEG.S, making the appropriate changes in MAIN.SEG.S. >Todd Whitesel >toddpw @ tybalt.caltech.edu Meanwhile I'll add anyone who requests it to the GBBS/ACOS Sysop Support mailing list, and accepting offers from anyone who is interested in taking over the administrative work of the mailing list, or a way to automate it. (Sorry for the delay thlayli@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Lord Thlayli Merriadoc Valentine of Kalakiryande), but I have lots of things going on right now that I need to take care of first.) -- /// ____ \\\ DON'T \"Have you ever been to Belgium in fact?" "I think | |/ / \ \| | PANIC \ that you should restrict that sort of remark to \\_( \==/ )_// Lig Lury, Jr. \ something artistic." "You sound as if I just \__\\/ greg@hoss.unl.edu \ said something unspeakably rude." "You did."