.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.
