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- .Ch "Troubleshooting C News"
- .Ix troubleshooting
- .Ix "read the documentation"
- .Ix "when in doubt, read the documentation"
- .SH
- Important First Step
- .PP 0
- Read the documentation.
- .PP
- \fIRead the documentation!\fR
- .PP
- \fBREAD THE DOCUMENTATION!!!\fR
- .PP
- Reading documentation is a bit tedious, and it seems sort of peripheral
- when there's a problem crying out to be solved,
- but news processing is relatively complex and effective troubleshooting
- requires that you understand what's going on.
- The investment of time is worthwhile.
- In particular...
- .PP
- If you are having trouble getting C News installed,
- or it seems to be malfunctioning,
- you should read
- ``Known Porting Problems With C News''
- carefully.
- Don't assume that your problem is not the same as one mentioned there
- just because you're on machine ABC and the one mentioned is on machine XYZ;
- some problems arise from generic causes that can occur on many systems.
- .PP
- If the software seems to be installed properly and appears to know what
- it's doing, but isn't doing what you want, careful reading of the manual
- pages is in order.
- We recommend particular attention to \fInews\fR(5),
- .Ix news(5)
- which documents the
- format of most of the control files in considerable detail.
- .SH
- General Approach
- .PP
- In general,
- your first priority should be to establish
- precisely what is going wrong and where.
- Read the documentation on how data flows within
- C News
- and how it interfaces
- to the rest of the system,
- and track down exactly where trouble is striking.
- If the software is sort of working but isn't doing things right,
- inspection of the \fIlog\fR and \fIerrlog\fR files in NEWSCTL often reveals
- what it thinks it's doing.
- .SH
- Frequently Reported Problems
- .Ix "common problems"
- .Ix problems common
- .PP
- .Ix problems "broken 386 optimiser"
- \fIIt all seems to work,
- but it's very slow and the \fRhistory.pag\fI file
- is enormous,
- many megabytes,
- much larger than the \fRhistory\fI file.
- By the way,
- this is on a 386.\fR
- See ``Known Porting Problems With C News'',
- specifically the section titled ``386 Optimizer vs. dbz''.
- (Note:
- at a site with a relatively small feed,
- it is normal for the
- \fIhistory.pag\fR file to be about half a megabyte for the first ten
- days,
- until \fIdbz\fR feels it has enough usage history to safely
- shrink the file.)
- .PP
- .Ix problems "local articles not forwarded"
- \fIIt works fine but the articles I post don't get sent to my neighbors.\fR
- This is probably a mistake in your \fIsys\fR file.
- .Ix sys
- .Ix files sys
- See \fInews\fR(5) and the sample \fIsys\fR file in the \fIconf\fR directory.
- Note in particular that an article is not sent to a site unless \fIboth\fR
- its newsgroup(s) \fIand\fR its distribution match those specified in the
- \fIsys\fR line, and the \fIsys\fR-line distribution does \fInot\fR default
- to ``all''.
- The single commonest change needed to old \fIsys\fR files is to put
- ``/all'' on the ends of the newsgroup lists to specify transmission of
- all distributions.
- .PP
- .Ix problems "renouncing setuid"
- \fIIt works fine for incoming news,
- but whenever I try to post an article
- myself I get a complaint about ``renouncing setuid''.\fR
- There are two places in C News where the pathnames of things like the
- control-file directory are known.
- One is the ``config'' file,
- .Ix config
- typically \fI/usr/lib/news/bin/config\fR.
- The other is compiled into some of the programs.
- You \fIcannot\fR change one without also changing the other;
- this means that you basically cannot change either without rebuilding
- the software.
- The ``renouncing setuid'' message means that the two are inconsistent.
- Do not try to edit the config file without rebuilding the software;
- that doesn't work.
- .PP
- .Ix problems "articles filed in odd places"
- .Ix problems "articles propagated to odd sites"
- \fII'm seeing articles filed in surprising places and/or propagated
- (not propagated) to sites that I thought shouldn't (should) get them.\fR
- The interaction of various policies in this area is \fInot\fR simple.
- It is almost certain that the software is doing what you told it to do.
- Close and careful reading of the \fInews\fR(5) and \fIrelaynews\fR(8)
- .Ix news(5)
- .Ix relaynews
- manual pages will probably clear up the difference between what you
- told it to do and what you \fIthought\fR you told it to do.
- .PP
- .Ix problems "stdio mismatch"
- \fII had trouble compiling your \fRstdio\fI speedups, and/or they
- failed the compatibility test, but I used them anyway, and now I'm
- having bizarre problems.\fR
- If the speedups don't compile smoothly
- or failed the compatibility test, \fIDON'T USE THEM!\fR
- In this area,
- being ``a little bit broken'' is like being a little bit pregnant.
- As \fIbuild\fR told you, there are systems where the speedups do
- not work.
- .PP
- .Ix problems "compiling libc/datetok.c with ANSI compiler"
- \fII'm having trouble compiling \fRlibc/datetok.c\fI with my ANSI
- C compiler.\fR
- We don't have ANSI C compilers handy for our own
- use, and there are a few troublesome areas where older compilers
- make difficulties and encourage errors.
- Until this particular bug
- gets fixed,
- a workaround is to move the definitions of \fIdatetktbl\fR
- and \fIszdatetktbl\fR up to the beginning of the file,
- and delete
- the erroneous \fIextern\fR declarations.
- .PP
- .Ix problems "articles looping between me and a neighbour"
- \fII get a news feed from my neighbor,
- and it arrives fine,
- but my system
- sends him not just the things I post locally,
- but also everything I get
- from him.\fR
- .Ix Path:
- .Ix sys
- .Ix files sys
- .Ix whoami
- .Ix files whoami
- News-loop prevention is based on the \fBPath\fR header lines.
- The name your neighbor is known by in your \fIsys\fR file does not match
- the one he's inserting into \fBPath\fR,
- so your news system thinks
- he hasn't seen those articles yet.
- A common cause of this is that he's putting a full domain name in \fBPath\fR
- and you're using a short version in your \fIsys\fR file,
- or vice versa.
- The best fix is to agree on names.
- A workaround,
- often useful,
- is to alter the \fIsys\fR line to use the
- exclusion feature.
- Say he's putting ``abc.def.ghi'' in his Paths and your
- sys file knows him only as ``abc''.
- If there is some reason why you can't
- just agree on the name,
- start the \fIsys\fR line with
- ``abc/abc.def.ghi:'' rather than just ``abc:'',
- to tell the news system ``send
- abc only things that have not passed through abc.def.ghi''.
- .PP
- .Ix problems "article tree on multiple filesystems"
- \fIWill C News work if my article tree is spread over more than one
- filesystem?\fR
- Yes,
- if your system supports symbolic links.
- Some tweaking is necessary:
- you will have to give \fIdoexpire\fR the \fB\-l\fR flag so it knows about
- the situation,
- and you will need to alter \fIspacefor\fR to check
- space on more than one filesystem.
- There is also a problem,
- currently,
- in that the \fIfind\fR command used
- by \fImkhistory\fR and \fIaddmissing\fR will not follow symbolic links;
- a fix for this is coming.
- .PP
- .Ix problems "want to ignore newgroup messages"
- \fIHow do I configure C News so that it will not automatically create any
- newsgroups just because some yo-yo on the net sends out a \fRnewgroup\fI
- message?\fR
- This is not provided as a configuration option at present.
- Most control messages are handled by shell files in NEWSBIN/\fIctl\fR,
- and those can be edited to implement any local policies desired.
- .PP
- .Ix problems "relaynews complains, history errors (File too large)"
- .Ix Unix "System V"
- .Ix "System V" breakage
- \fIIt ran fine for a while, but now \fRrelaynews\fI is complaining that
- it's unable to write the history file, saying ``(File too large)''.\fR
- This means you're on a System V or related system that implements the
- stupid \fIulimit\fR feature,
- limiting the size of files,
- and the
- \fIulimit\fR is too low.
- Note that while some sensible suppliers have their \fIlogin\fR raise the
- limit to a very high value,
- most of them seem to have forgotten to do
- the same for \fIcron\fR... and much of C News is run from \fIcron\fR.
- .Ix cron
- .PP
- .Ix problems "mail telling me to delete groups"
- .Ix checkgroups
- .Ix "control messages" checkgroups
- \fII occasionally get a mail message saying a whole bunch of groups are
- invalid and I should delete them.
- What's going on?\fR
- This is the result of a \fIcheckgroups\fR control message being received.
- There is no clear specification for the contents of such a message,
- and the C News \fIcheckgroups\fR code is known to be buggy.
- This will be fixed eventually.
- For now,
- ignore the mail.
- .PP
- .Ix problems "newsdaily says I'm sending bad headers"
- \fIThe daily status reports from \fRnewsdaily\fI mention my own site
- as one sending bad headers!
- What's going on?\fR
- This is a bug in the logging code:
- when it wants to generate a log message for some condition that has no
- site name associated, it uses your own rather than something like
- `<no_name>'.
- This will be fixed eventually.
-