Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: trn problems
Message-ID: <1991Jan17.173458.7821@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <9095@dog.ee.lbl.gov> <PPT+T9+@b-tech.uucp>
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 1991 17:34:58 GMT

In article <PPT+T9+@b-tech.uucp> zeeff@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us (Jon Zeeff) writes:
>I found that performance was bad when the nntp server didn't run 
>updatemin (with C News).  I believe it causes requests for thousands 
>of articles that don't exist.  

This is true.  The problem is that NNTP provides no easy way to ask for
a crucial piece of information:  "which of the articles in the min..max
range actually exist?".  Keeping min up to date, with upact or updatemin,
helps.  (It does not actually solve the problem, since the min..max range
is not necessarily densely populated, but it helps.  The only real fix
is to fix the NNTP protocol.)

>Also, the sever might want to run a "find /usr/spool/news
>-mtime +30 -exec rm {} \;" now and then.

Shouldn't be necessary under C News, unless your system crashes a lot.
C News doesn't lose articles, unless the underlying system fails on it.

Also, again under C News, a better way to do this is to run the (new)
"addmissing" program occasionally.  That adds any orphaned articles to
the history database, so they can expire normally, without disturbing
articles that legitimately have an expiry time longer than 30 days.
It's also typically faster.
-- 
If the Space Shuttle was the answer,   | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
what was the question?                 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry
