Re: Excessively Large NEWS.DAT File

Omar Hill (where.waldo.is@io.org)
Tue, 16 Apr 1996 14:20:12 -0400

Tue, 16 Apr 1996 00:21:20 -0400,
mlavalle@ViaNet.on.ca (Michael Lavallee) wrote:
>Didn't work. The file is just over 42 MB now, and there are still
>articles from 27 February. Even stranger, when EXPIRE ran tonight
>it didn't delete anything. :-(

Here we go again... you ran expire -r or expire -o? That Rebuild -s wil
reset all your import dates.. so if you expire -o then you are going to
have to wait for the expiry period again (while your messages build up
like a towering inferno...)... I wish poeple would stop suggesting
rebuild -s, because in 90% of the cases it seems to cause more
confusion and have a net negative effect for most users...

On another note... i also have some really old posts in my news base i
found... they also refuse to expire (they also don't show up inside
yarn in the newsgroup they belong to-- only noticed them while browsing
my news.dat one day manually (hey a guy has to do global searches
somehow!)). I was told (by authorative sources <g>) i needed to expire
-o to rebuild the overview file... but warned that if i do this all the
numbering in my newsrc will be invalid because it renumbers all the
messages... so i decided... my news.dat isn't big enough for me to go
to the trouble <-:. The paradox is of course that if my news.dat does
get to the size where it's worth while it will be so big that it will
be a dreadful painful brutal task which i will loath to start and
probably put it off forever! Eventually as the years pass the time will
come for my next major hard drive failure where i lose everything...
and the problem will be solved. Wheee... I can hardly wait (but not
this week please!). Or next... or...

-- 
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  Tim Muddleton =-=-=- with love and squalor -=-=-= as544@torfree.net
  -=-= check into the New International Translation of the Bible =-=-
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