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.