rn 4.3 patch #33
Larry Wall
Patch #: 33
Priority: MEDIUM? (depends on how many local newsgroups you have, actually)
Subject: The net reorganization may make too many newsgroups for rn to handle
From: csg@pyramid (Carl S. Gutekunst)
Description:
Depending on how many local newsgroups you have in your active file,
and how many newsgroups you keep in your .newsrc (rn doesn't require
you to keep them all), you may exceed rn's limit of 500 newsgroups.
With the current massive newsgroup renaming, there are more newsgroups
that usual, at least until the old newsgroups are rmgrouped.
Fix: This is really an optional patch. Sites with limited D space may
choose to forego this change, and hope nobody puts too many newsgroups
into their .newsrc. You should increment the patchlevel anyway so
any subsequent patches get applied correctly. You may wish to edit
your newsnews file to instruct people that they can delete unsubscribed
or uninteresting newsgroups from their .newsrc with an editor to keep
themselves under the limit.
Otherwise, install the following patch.
From rn, say "| patch -d DIR", where DIR is your rn source directory.
Outside of rn, say "cd DIR; patch <thisarticle". If you don't have
the patch program, apply the following by hand, or get patch.
If patch indicates that patchlevel is the wrong version, you may need
to apply one or more previous patches, or the patch may already
have been applied. See the patchlevel file to find out what has or
has not been applied. In any event, don't continue with the patch.
If you are missing previous patches they can be obtained from me:
Larry Wall
{allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdcsvax}!sdcrdcf!lwall
If you send a mail message of the following form it will greatly speed
processing:
Subject: Command
@SH mailpatch PATH rn 4.3 NUM ...
where PATH is a return path FROM ME TO YOU in bang notation, and NUM
is the number of one or more patches you need, separated by spaces.
Index: patchlevel
Prereq: 32
1c1
< Patch #: 32
---
> Patch #: 33
Index: common.h
Prereq: 4.3.1.3
*** common.h.old Fri Oct 31 15:48:38 1986
--- common.h Fri Oct 31 15:48:53 1986
***************
*** 1,4
! /* $Header: common.h,v 4.3.1.3 85/05/23 17:19:32 lwall Exp $
*
* $Log: common.h,v $
* Revision 4.3.1.3 85/05/23 17:19:32 lwall
--- 1,4 -----
! /* $Header: common.h,v 4.3.1.4 86/10/31 15:46:09 lwall Exp $
*
* $Log: common.h,v $
* Revision 4.3.1.4 86/10/31 15:46:09 lwall
***************
*** 1,6
/* $Header: common.h,v 4.3.1.3 85/05/23 17:19:32 lwall Exp $
*
* $Log: common.h,v $
* Revision 4.3.1.3 85/05/23 17:19:32 lwall
* Now allows 'r' and 'f' on null articles.
*
--- 1,9 -----
/* $Header: common.h,v 4.3.1.4 86/10/31 15:46:09 lwall Exp $
*
* $Log: common.h,v $
+ * Revision 4.3.1.4 86/10/31 15:46:09 lwall
+ * Expanded maximum number of .newsrc lines for net reorganization.
+ *
* Revision 4.3.1.3 85/05/23 17:19:32 lwall
* Now allows 'r' and 'f' on null articles.
*
***************
*** 210,216
/* Space conservation section */
/* To save D space, cut down size of MAXRCLINE, NGMAX, VARYSIZE. */
! #define MAXRCLINE 500 /* number of lines allowed in .newsrc */
/* several parallel arrays affected. */
/* (You can have more lines in the active file, */
/* just not in the .newsrc) */
--- 222,228 -----
/* Space conservation section */
/* To save D space, cut down size of MAXRCLINE, NGMAX, VARYSIZE. */
! #define MAXRCLINE 1000 /* number of lines allowed in .newsrc */
/* several parallel arrays affected. */
/* (You can have more lines in the active file, */
/* just not in the .newsrc) */
***************
*** 214,220
/* several parallel arrays affected. */
/* (You can have more lines in the active file, */
/* just not in the .newsrc) */
! #define HASHSIZ 547 /* should be prime, and at least MAXRCLINE + 10% */
#define NGMAX 100 /* number of newsgroups allowed on command line */
/* undefine ONLY symbol to disable "only" feature */
#define VARYSIZE 256 /* this makes a block 1024 bytes long in DECville */
--- 226,232 -----
/* several parallel arrays affected. */
/* (You can have more lines in the active file, */
/* just not in the .newsrc) */
! #define HASHSIZ 1103 /* should be prime, and at least MAXRCLINE + 10% */
#define NGMAX 100 /* number of newsgroups allowed on command line */
/* undefine ONLY symbol to disable "only" feature */
#define VARYSIZE 256 /* this makes a block 1024 bytes long in DECville */
John Gilmore
various limits in the news software (inews, rnews, rn, ...) are breaking.
The posted fixes all seem to be of the "remove blown fuse, insert penny"
variety.
Have none of the news maintainers heard of "malloc"???
C news has been doing this right from the start -- for example, on the
active file, it stat's the file, mallocs the right amount of space,
then reads the whole file into memory in one read. Very fast and there
are no magic constants to tweak next time the net grows. If there's
more stuff in the active file than will fit in RAM, you have problems,
but this is also true of the "penny" fixes.
It just seems like common sense to me...
--
John Gilmore {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu jgil...@lll-crg.arpa
terrorist, cryptography, DES, drugs, cipher, secret, decode, NSA, CIA, NRO.
The above is food for the NSA line eater. Add it to your .signature and
you too can help overflow the NSA's ability to scan all traffic going in or
out of the USA looking for "significant" words. (This is not a joke, sadly.)
Rick Adams
News 2.11 uses malloc. There is only 1 hard limit in it anymore. (LINES =512
in defs.h) That is the maximum number of lines in the .newsrc. Even
"rn" has this as a hard limit.
Any sites running 2.11 had no problems with all of those newgroups.
(Actually the 2.10.3 version on teh final 4.3bsd tape has this fixed as well)
--rick
Larry Campbell
people's news systems apparently going down in flames, and I'm still
breathlessly awaiting the arrival of the fabled 2.11 in mod.sources.
The documentation has been posted, so I guess the source code should
be here Real Soon Now.
Now, fortunately (by judicious rmgrouping on my part) I've managed to
keep my news software from cratering. I would really rather run 2.11,
I think -- it certainly sounds wonderful. But it's tough to run
software you don't have.
This isn't meant as a flame at anyone -- I'm sure the maintainers of
the news software are putting in far more work than we have any right
to expect -- but I sure wish 2.11 had been distributed before the
reorganization started.
--
Larry Campbell MCI: LCAMPBELL The Boston Software Works, Inc.
UUCP: {alliant,wjh12}!maynard!campbell 120 Fulton Street, Boston MA 02109
ARPA: campbell%maynar...@harvisr.harvard.edu (617) 367-6846
John Gilmore
> News 2.11 uses malloc. There is only 1 hard limit in it anymore. (LINES=512)
Great. Thanks for fixing this and sorry for the flame. I should have looked
in the new code.
--
John Gilmore {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu jgil...@lll-crg.arpa
"I can't think of a better way for the War Dept to spend money than to
subsidize the education of teenage system hackers by creating the Arpanet."
Mark Horton
>This isn't meant as a flame at anyone -- I'm sure the maintainers of
>the news software are putting in far more work than we have any right
>to expect -- but I sure wish 2.11 had been distributed before the
>reorganization started.
We planned to do that. The plan was to wait for 2.11 to finish being
posted, and the message I put in mod.announce warning what had happened
if a news system had suddenly broken, and THEN the big batch of newgroups
for comp and news would go out.
What happened is that an SA fumbled his fingers and sent out the newgroups
before they were supposed to go out. We found out about it within a few
hours, and did what we could to stop the newgroups. It turned out that
most of the San Francisco Bay Area was demolished, and a few other parts
of the country were hit (mostly in New York and New Jersey), but the
damage was mostly confined to those areas.
One of the problems with the old news software is that it made it too
easy for someone to accidently clobber the net. 2.11 sites were not
bothered at all by the bogus newgroups.
In any case, 2.11 posting was paused until the dust settled from the
quake, and now it's been resumed.
Mark