Hello Janis.

03 Nov 02 22:19, you wrote to me:

 >>> NLMaint has caused a variety of problems - unpredictably.

 >> User error?

 JK> No :)  From what I understand, the dos version is very bad and doesn't
 JK> process segments correctly, and I've heard that it drops regions.

Well I've never used the dos version so I can't comment, maybe the compiler
used did something odd.

 JK> The Linux version I am running worked fine for me in the begining,
 JK> then
 JK> randomly would not process new segments that came in from RCs. Sometimes
 JK> it would drop whole regions from the nodelist.

 JK> I got around that problem by having my script copy all new segments into
 JK> nlmaints' Inbound directory, running it in test mode to move them into
 JK> the Update directory, and then touching files in the update directory
 JK> and in the Master directory before the zone 1 list run on Tuesday
 JK> nights, and the thursday nodediff run. In recent weeks and months, there
 JK> was no problem at all with it. The problems I mentioned happened perhaps
 JK> a year ago..

 JK> Then, this Tuesday's Zone 1 segment was created for the other zones, and
 JK> my own listings in net 261 (1:261/38 and 1:261/100) were missing..as
 JK> though my RC had submitted a segment from a period before I moved to
 JK> that region in June (he hadn't done that though) :(  There may have been
 JK> other errors in that zone list, but this one is the one that I've heard
 JK> about 

 JK> I didn't notice that error, but was made aware of it by one of my
 JK> downlinks from Z2 on Friday afternoon, well after the Thursday nodediff
 JK> run.

 JK> This thursday, around the time the nodediff should have been processed
 JK> on my system, I was curious because I was on my bbs checking mail, and
 JK> didn't get the normal, "Nodelist.298 has been updated to
Nodelist.305"
 JK> message from my bbs..

 JK> I stopped all the cron jobs so I could check the nodediff before it got
 JK> sent out all over zone 1, and took a look.. NlMaint had an erroneous
 JK> date (sometime in 2001, not this Friday's date in 2002), and the wrong
 JK> CRC on the diff, and that's why my bbs's nodelist compiler wouldn't
 JK> apply the diff.

 JK> I removed all the *305 files from nlmaint's subdirectories, and ran my
 JK> nodelist/nodediff script again manually.. this time, it created a
 JK> perfect Zone 1 segment, and a perfect diff.. as far as I know, at least.
 JK> I haven't heard of any problems down the line :)

 JK> So.. it can be flukey.. I'll be watching it very carefully in the next
 JK> few weeks 

The occurrences you describe seem to remind me of the things it will do if it
gets a bad segment. Completely leaving things out etc from bad dates,
formatting etc.

Does it often give you errors? I find that it doesn't agree with a lot of
practices occuring within the nodelist(s) but generally most of these will
produce error reports and the segment/list will still compile.

The particular problem noted above seems to be a date issue, whether that
occurred there or due to a date in a segment I couldn't say.

Cheers,
                Rick

... Alzheimers advantage: New friends every day.

--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5 - Debian/GNU