Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site ulysses.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!gatech!ulysses!smb
From: smb@ulysses.UUCP (Steven Bellovin)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: The Great Net Cleanup Part II
Message-ID: <1051@ulysses.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 16-Aug-85 16:11:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: ulysses.1051
Posted: Fri Aug 16 16:11:22 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 19-Aug-85 08:13:01 EDT
References: <696@gatech.CSNET> <697@gatech.CSNET> <813@gatech.CSNET> <9935@ucbvax.ARPA>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 25

> I would have thought that someone would have remarked on this before,
> but, apparently not.
> 
> A while back someone said that if there was some fixed limit to the
> number of newsgroups, that would justify (in his opinion) removing
> dead groups, but otherwise he preferred keeping them.
> 
> Well, big surprise people, there is just such a limit, in every version
> of news I have seen (up to, and including 2.10.3).
> 
> The limit is on the number of characters in all the newsgroup
> names concatenated together (including separators).  On ucbvax
> the active file is currently about 60% there already (of the
> limit in 2.10.3 - I have a vague memory that the limit was
> set smaller in older versions).

Just as a case in point, ulysses lost about 12 hours worth of news last night
(and I lost a lot of time cleaning up after it) because net.music.guitar blew
that limit...

Which brings up a suggestion -- would it be that hard for rnews to try a
bit harder to keep an article when things have blown up?  Say, try saving
it in /usr/spool/news/SAVE/dd.hh.pid (which should be unique for the life
of the problem)?  Maybe even a list of alternate directories to try, site-
configurable, for when /usr/spool is out of space or i-nodes.