Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site watcgl.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!watcgl!dmmartindale
From: dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: New newgroup suggestion--Re: Permanent Postings
Message-ID: <852@watcgl.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 22-Dec-84 18:50:59 EST
Article-I.D.: watcgl.852
Posted: Sat Dec 22 18:50:59 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Dec-84 00:31:46 EST
References: <845@watcgl.UUCP> <1039@houxm.UUCP>
Reply-To: dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 17

In article <1039@houxm.UUCP> gregbo@houxm.UUCP (Greg Skinner) writes:
>If you use cron jobs to expire news, you can always have the first few files
>ignored.

I don't understand this comment at all.  The article I wrote (to which
Greg is referring) was trying to point out that if you have articles that
never expire, eventually readnews will die of a "bitmap too small" error
while trying to look at that group.  The problem is that the span in
article numbers between the oldest unexpired article and the most recently
arrived one is limited to a fixed manifest constant.  If you leave the
old articles around forever, and have the "least article number"
field of the active file remain at its small value, you will eventually
exceed this constant and readnews will simply quit, without even allowing
you to go on to another group.  If, on the other hand, you have expire
update the active file as if the ancient articles did not exist, then
readnews will never find them (even for new users) and so they might as
well have been deleted.