Re: How to reclaim space in news.dat?

Ramsay D. Seielstad (mrhuey@wizvax.net)
Thu, 26 Dec 1996 18:21:56 -0500

In article <0NUwyoag9r+C091yn@telusplanet.net>, you wrote:
->In article <VKJwyIcj1qQb090yn@image.dk>, jbang@image.dk (Jens Bang) wrote:
->>
->>I know that doing an expire -r or an expire -o will delete messages from my
->>news.dat file, but not reclaim the space they took up. How do I reclaim
->>this space? My news.dat file is above 90 MB at the moment, and I would LOVE
->>to get it down in size.
->>
->
->Use rebuild -s. It will shrink news.dat. It also resets the expiry dates so
->you will notice that expire -o will do nothing until the keepdays limit is reached
->again.
->

The more I think about it, the more I think Chin should re-think the
rebuild -s option to either leave the expirey date as is when you rebuild
or let you specify to reset it.

I also am running around a 100 meg news.dat, some of it due to what
most might think as an excessive expire time of 30 to 45 days on a few
newsgroups. I also have found that I add newsgroups for a short time
and then remove them if I find the topic really does not interest me.

On the short term groups though, I do perform an 'expire -o -d 999'
before I remove them from the yarn active file. I am pretty confidant
that the space is available for use, just not optimized to allow the
file to be shrunk properly.

-- 
 
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Ramsay D. Seielstad  | mrhuey@wizvax.net; Af029@Detroit.Freenet.Org         |
|   Schenectady, NY    | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~                                    |
+-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+
| "No fancy terminators or trailers, No opinion, Just an average, everyday    |
|  guy with a bunch of unrelated hobbyist activities that have no significant |
|  use or value other than to amuse myself and occupy my free time ... and    |
|  trust me, these ain't MY employer's opinions or views"                     |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+