Xref: utzoo unix-pc.general:3800 comp.sys.att:7691 comp.sources.bugs:1973 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bloom-beacon!spdcc!gnosys!gst From: gst@gnosys.UUCP (Gary S. Trujillo) Newsgroups: unix-pc.general,comp.sys.att,comp.sources.bugs Subject: B news 2.11 patch 18 considered harmful Message-ID: <392@gnosys.UUCP> Date: 3 Oct 89 22:38:11 GMT Followup-To: unix-pc.general Organization: gst's 3B1 - Somerville, Massachusetts Lines: 76 Recently, the following was posted: |Path: gnosys!spdcc!bloom-beacon!shelby!mcnc!gatech!emory!skeeve!arnold |From: arnold@skeeve.UUCP (Arnold D. Robbins) |Newsgroups: unix-pc.sources |Subject: Patch #18 to B News 2.11 |Message-ID: <253@skeeve.UUCP> |Date: 17 Sep 89 04:08:30 GMT |Distribution: unix-pc |Organization: The Basement Computer, Atlanta GA |Lines: 2254 | |Well, believe it or not, B News is NOT dead! (Merely on heavy life support.) |Despite the release of C News and the imminent release of B News 3.0 |(TMN-Netnews), Rick Adams has released the following patch to B News. | |Skeeve is still at 2.11.14. I haven't decide yet which news I'm going |to switch to, or when. At the moment, it ain't broke so I ain't fixing it. |------------------------------- |Path: emory!gatech!udel!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!rick |From: rick@uunet.UU.NET (Rick Adams) |Newsgroups: news.software.b |Subject: patch 18 for B news 2.11 |Message-ID: <67503@uunet.UU.NET> |Date: 12 Sep 89 23:10:59 GMT |Organization: UUNET Communications Services, Falls Church, VA |Lines: 2232 | |Description: | This is patch 18 for news 2.11. It addresses the following problems: | | Small changes to work around various compiler bugs. | fixed batch to return to BATCHDIR before renaming work file. | checkgroups no longer mails you a message if everything's ok | Fixed active file to handle a maximum of 9,999,999 messages | to avoid wraparound problem at current 99,999... Well, I naively patched my sources, which were at patchlevel 17, and got a very corrupted situation in my /usr/spool/news/* directories. Here's the sort of thing I found: 2 -rw-r--r-- 2 news 1022 Oct 3 15:34 41414 5 -rw-r--r-- 1 news 2093 Oct 3 15:33 414 3 -rw-r--r-- 1 news 1330 Oct 3 15:33 4 4 -rw-r--r-- 1 news 1580 Oct 3 15:33 31414 3 -rw-r--r-- 1 news 1490 Oct 3 15:33 314 2 -rw-r--r-- 1 news 808 Oct 3 15:33 3 2 -rw-r--r-- 1 news 530 Oct 3 15:33 21414 2 -rw-r--r-- 3 news 958 Oct 3 15:32 214 2 -rw-r--r-- 1 news 704 Oct 3 15:32 2 4 -rw-r--r-- 1 news 1651 Oct 3 15:31 5714 D'ya see a pattern?? Looks like it's taking the last two digits of the last valid article filename, and plays games with them. Worse yet, rn goes crazy when there's such a wide article-sequence spread (runs out of memory on my 2 meg machine, in fact). Here's what we find in /usr/lib/news/errlog: Oct 3 15:32 <1989Oct2.175907.8836@alberta.uucp> inews: found bad ngsize 359695 ng misc.jobs.misc, setting to 1 Oct 3 15:32 <195@temvax.UUCP> inews: found bad ngsize 292827 ng misc.jobs.offered, setting to 1 Oct 3 15:33inews: found bad ngsize 2969695 ng misc.jobs.misc, setting to 1 Oct 3 15:33 <4826@cps3xx.UUCP> inews: found bad ngsize 2141413 ng comp.unix.xenix, setting to 1 Oct 3 15:33 inews: found bad ngsize 2434342 ng soc.men, setting to 1 Oct 3 15:33 inews: found bad ngsize 3969695 ng misc.jobs.misc, setting to 1 Oct 3 15:33 <37@gutarman.UUCP> inews: found bad ngsize 3141413 ng comp.unix.xenix, setting to 1 Oct 3 15:34 <216@hutch.UUCP> inews: found bad ngsize 4969695 ng misc.jobs.misc, setting to 1 Oct 3 15:34 <334@mlfarm.UUCP> inews: found bad ngsize 4141413 ng comp.unix.xenix, setting to 1 Oct 3 15:35 <13915@well.UUCP> inews: found bad ngsize 2282827 ng misc.jobs.offered, setting to 1 I have promptly fallen back to patchlevel 17! -- Gary S. Trujillo gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us Somerville, Massachusetts {wjh12,spdcc,ima,cdp}!gnosys!gst