Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site phri.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!cmcl2!phri!roy From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) Newsgroups: net.news.b Subject: checkgroups consumes file system Message-ID: <3@phri.UUCP> Date: Sat, 2-Nov-85 15:00:43 EST Article-I.D.: phri.3 Posted: Sat Nov 2 15:00:43 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 4-Nov-85 01:47:40 EST References: <187@phri.UUCP> Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY) Lines: 73 Original-Subject: loss of traffic through phri > Because we ran out of space on our spool file system today... It turns out that the culprit was news itself. I ran the latest checkgroups message <1826@gatech.CSNET> yesterday. A hour or so later, we ran out of space on /usr. Doing a hasty expire (i.e. cd ~news/trash-group; rm *) and rm'ing a bunch of other stuff didn't seem to help as much as I thought it would, and we ran out of space again soon after that. I brought Unix down and found some 3000 (!) checkgroups messages in /usr/spool/news/control, at about 11kb each. I had saved the article in xxx and done "sed 1,/Lines:/d xxx | sh >& xxx.out &", much the same procedure I usually use. I just repeated the procedure today with no trouble, so I'm really confused as to what is going on. No, I havn't changed the directory permissions before or since. Some excerpts from yesterday's xxx.out (over 2000 lines total, many of them blank): inews: Cannot reread article inews: Cannot reread article [...] inews: Cannot install article as /usr/spool/news/control/3140 inews: Link into /usr/spool/news/control/3140 failed, errno 5, check dir permissions. inews: Cannot reread article inews: Cannot install article as /usr/spool/news/control/3140 inews: Link into /usr/spool/news/control/3140 failed, errno 5, check dir permissions. [...] inews: News system locked up [...] inews: Cannot install article as /usr/spool/news/control/3647 inews: Cannot install article as /usr/spool/news/control/3648 inews: Cannot install article as /usr/spool/news/control/3649 inews: Cannot install article as /usr/spool/news/control/3650 [...] inews: Cannot install article as /usr/spool/news/control/3908 inews: Link into /usr/spool/news/control/3908 failed, errno 5, check dir permissions. inews: Cannot reread article inews: Cannot install article as /usr/spool/news/control/3908 inews: Link into /usr/spool/news/control/3908 failed, errno 5, check dir permissions. [...] And, some excerpts from /usr/lib/news/log (I *think* the first line shown is the first mention of the checkgroup): Nov 1 18:33 local posted <543@phri.UUCP> ng control subj 'cmsg checkgroups' Nov 1 18:33 local Ctl Msg control from roy: checkgroups Nov 1 18:33 cmcl2.UUCP received <1840@gatech.CSNET> ng mod.newslists,net.announce.newusers subj 'Changes to Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists' Nov 1 18:33 local system(sed '1,/^$/d' /usr/spool/news/.ar012964 | /usr/lib/news/checkgroups usenet) status 36096 Nov 1 18:33 local posted <544@phri.UUCP> ng control subj 'cmsg checkgroups' Nov 1 18:33 local Ctl Msg control from news: checkgroups Nov 1 18:33 cmcl2.UUCP from usenet@gatech.CSNET relay version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site cmcl2.UUCP Nov 1 18:33 local system(sed '1,/^$/d' /usr/spool/news/.ar012970 | /usr/lib/news/checkgroups usenet) status 36096 [...] Nov 1 19:48 local Ctl Msg control from news: checkgroups Nov 1 19:49 cmcl2.UUCP Duplicate article <320@ssc-vax.UUCP> rejected Nov 1 19:49 local system(sed '1,/^$/d' /usr/spool/news/.ar015494 | /usr/lib/news/checkgroups usenet) status 36096 Nov 1 19:49 local posted <931@phri.UUCP> ng control subj 'cmsg checkgroups' As you can see, inews just kept trying to post the checkgroups to newsgroup control, without any success. It seems to me that after a certain number of tries, it should just give up. As it is, inews just kept trying until it killed the system -- 30 Mbytes of aborted articles in ~news/control, plus a log file well over 1300 kbytes long! I'm not sure why it failed the in the first place. Could doing a checkgroups while news is coming in be a Bad Thing? Actually, several news-things were going on at the same time. In addition to the checkgroups and the incoming feed, we were queueing up news for 2 or 3 downstream sites, and expire was running (the load on our 11/750 was 8!) -- Roy SmithSystem Administrator, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016