Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: C news problem:  spacefor script
Message-ID: <1991Mar6.213302.17283@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1991 21:33:02 GMT
References: <1991Mar6.153527.10070@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1991Mar6.153527.10070@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> phil@eecs.nwu.edu (William LeFebvre) writes:
>Some times, but not all the time, when uuxqt runs rnews on an incoming batch,
>the script "spacefor" as invoked by rnews does not write anything to
>standard output.  As a result, the check for free space fails and the
>batch is (eventually) dropped.  Once spacefor starts doing this, it continues
>to happen until I modify rnews or otherwise interfere with the goings on.
> ...
>I have not been able to get spacefor to fail by invoking it myself.  I
>have not been able to get things to fail by invoking uuxqt by hand.

I've seen things like this before, although not in the C News context.
Some resource is being exhausted, and spacefor is failing to run.
A strong possibility is that you're exceeding the limit on the number
of processes a given userid can have running.  Exhaustion of swap space
is another idea.  Also of note is that some very old uuxqts were sloppy
about closing file descriptors and eventually ran out.
-- 
"But this *is* the simplified version   | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
for the general public."     -S. Harris |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
