[1431] in SIPB bug reports
rrn hangs when posting followup
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Sun Nov 11 00:04:44 1990
Date: Sun, 11 Nov 90 00:04:11 -0500
From: "Jonathan I. Kamens" <jik@pit-manager.MIT.EDU>
To: pschmidt%winter.UUCP@BLOOM-BEACON.MIT.EDU
Cc: bug-sipb@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: pschmidt%winter.UUCP@BLOOM-BEACON.MIT.EDU's message of Sat, 10 Nov 90 00:42:46 EST <9011100542.AA01249@cayman.Cayman.COM>
Believe it or not, the most likely explanation is not that rrn is
hanging, but rather that it's taking a *really* long time to finish
the posting.
Unfortunately, the method the news server uses to queue incoming
requests does not preserve order in requests. Furthermore, the
process of posting messages is very similar to the process by which
our news server gets incoming news from our news feeds, which puts
them in the same queue for grabbing the lock on the news system.
Since there is no preservation of order, every time the lock on the
news system is available, it's grabbed on a first-come-first-serve
basis. If we've got a lot of waiting connections from incoming news
feeds, and a few of those manage to grab the lock before your posting
process, you're going to wait a *long* time for them to finish.
I'm currently corresponding with the authors of our news software
about figuring out a way to make this problem go away. In the mean
time, you have two options:
1. Post late at night; the delays are usually less then.
2. Post your messages through mintaka.lcs.mit.edu instead of
bloom-beacon. Write up the entire message and save it to a file,
and then do "(setenv NNTPSERVER mintaka.lcs.mit.edu; inews <
filename)" where "filename" is the name of the file with the
posting in it. Mintaka tends to take less time to finish postings.
I hope I've answered your question.
--> Jonathan Kamens
Project Athena Watchmaker and User Consultant
Student Information Processing Board (SIPB) member
jik@Athena.MIT.EDU
