> I have a little question regarding the 'expire' command:
> My news.dat file is about 17 MB, and no matter how much it
> expires, it stays at 17 MB. I'd assume the thing would shrink
> afterwards?
> expire -r
> [lots of things being reported...]
I recently discovered something interesting about expire.
expire -r does not shrink news.dat
expire -o *does* shrink news.dat, if it expires outdated posts.
Evidently import appends news to the end of news.dat and expire -o
whacks off the beginning of news.dat. Over time this would tend
to frag the file if you're using FAT. For large files, particularly,
a periodic defrag would seem indicated.
I keep posts around for 10 days, and my news.dat file has been a nice
9 or 10 megs for a couple weeks now.
Make sure your system clock is set accurately before you try this at
home. :)
-- Larry