[leafnode-list] Can't get leafnode to work with news servers that work with clients.

[Adam Funk]

On Tuesday 07 June 2005 16:43, Matthias Andree wrote:

> > I seem to have two problems.

I forgot to mention that I get either problem 1 or problem 2, not both 
at the same time (although I believe you inferred that), and that both 
occur seemingly randomly but not all the time (for example, it worked 
for about 20 hours since yesterday).

> > 1. The servers time out while leafnode is "considering" articles to
> >    download.  For example:

This hasn't happened since your reply.  I'll post the debugging info 
when it next occurs.

> If and only if you have configured a filterfile= or other filters,
> you can try to set "article_despite_filter=1" in your config file and

I haven't used any filters.

> see if that helps. IF it helps, blueyonder's servers are royally
> broken.

That wouldn't surprise me, *but* another Blueyonder customer said 
he'd been using leafnode successfully for several years except for 
a few timeout problems explained by dropped dial-up connections 
and subsequently a dodgy router.


> > 2. The processes started by the hourly fetchnews cron job stay
> > alive and hold the lock file for a *long* time and prevent
> > subsequent jobs from starting.  They don't appear to do anything
> > according to `top` and find `/var/spool/news -mmin -5` (for
> > example).
>
> Please get me a backtrace of the hanging process, 9489 in this case.
> The FAQ that should have shipped as
> /usr/share/doc/leafnode/FAQ.txt.gz has detailed information on how to
> do that.

Sorry, my leafnode, texpire and fetchnews executables are all 
stripped (from the binary Debian packages).  If you think it's 
worthwhile I could try compiling from source to carry this out.

Problem 2 has just happened again.  The following might help?


/var/spool/news $ find -mmin -50

/var/spool/news $ date
Wed Jun  8 13:59:39 BST 2005

/var/spool/news $ ps aux|grep news
news      8917  0.0  0.1   4488  1228 ?        Ss   13:08   0:00 /bin/sh -c if [ -x /etc/news/leafnode/do-fetch-news ]; then /etc/news/leafnode/do-fetch-news; fi
news      8919  0.0  0.1   4492  1260 ?        S    13:08   0:00 /bin/sh /etc/news/leafnode/do-fetch-news
news      8921  0.0  0.3   4616  3016 ?        S    13:08   0:00 /usr/sbin/fetchnews
102       8922  0.0  0.1   4516  1372 ?        S    13:08   0:00 /usr/sbin/sendmail -i -FCronDaemon -oem news
adam      9166  0.0  0.0   3588   572 pts/2    R+   13:59   0:00 grep news

/var/spool/news $ cd /var/log/

/var/log $ grep news syslog |tail -30
Jun  8 13:08:11 garcia fetchnews[8921]: <220 48271 <3go570Fd33hoU3 at individual.net>
Jun  8 13:08:11 garcia fetchnews[8921]: >ARTICLE 48272
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: <220 48272 <3go5apFd33hoU4 at individual.net>
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: >ARTICLE 48273
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: <220 48273 <3go5c6Fd33hoU5 at individual.net>
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: alt.fan.noam-chomsky: 9 articles fetched (to 591), 0 killed
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: >GROUP blueyonder.comp.linux
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: <211 1323 2461 3787 blueyonder.comp.linux
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: blueyonder.comp.linux: no new articles 
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: >GROUP blueyonder.feedback
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: <211 8096 18938 27103 blueyonder.feedback
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: blueyonder.feedback: no new articles 
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: >GROUP blueyonder.users.faqs
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: <211 309 225 533 blueyonder.users.faqs
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: blueyonder.users.faqs: no new articles 
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: >GROUP blueyonder.users.events
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: <211 2 2 3 blueyonder.users.events
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: blueyonder.users.events: no new articles 
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: >GROUP rec.woodworking
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: <211 129532 13437 143395 rec.woodworking
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: rec.woodworking: considering articles 143385 - 143395 
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: >XHDR Message-ID 143385-143395
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: <221 message-id fields follow
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: rec.woodworking: will fetch 11 articles
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: >XHDR Date 143385-143395
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: <221 date fields follow
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: >ARTICLE 143385
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: <220 143385 <ahkda1daqu41aentak73o7t0esmmib2qt1 at 4ax.com>
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: >ARTICLE 143386
Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: <220 143386 <2njda1dr21st0agdenrh73aljsgfhjvenu at 4ax.com>


/var/log $ su
Password: 

/var/log # kill 8921


** Here's the point in "grep news syslog" where the kill
** occurred

Jun  8 13:08:12 garcia fetchnews[8921]: <220 143386 <2njda1dr21st0agdenrh73aljsgfhjvenu at 4ax.com>
Jun  8 14:00:13 garcia fetchnews[8921]: fetchnews: caught signal 15, shutting down.
Jun  8 14:00:13 garcia fetchnews[8921]: >QUIT
Jun  8 14:00:13 garcia fetchnews[8921]: WARNING: some servers have not been queried!
Jun  8 14:00:14 garcia fetchnews[8921]: wrote active file with 35292 lines
Jun  8 14:00:14 garcia fetchnews[9187]: Process forked.
Jun  8 14:00:14 garcia fetchnews[8921]: child has process ID 9187
Jun  8 14:00:14 garcia fetchnews[9187]: reading XOVER info from /var/spool/news/alt/religion/kibology/2557
Jun  8 14:00:14 garcia fetchnews[9187]: updated 1 line in /var/spool/news/alt/religion/kibology/.overview
Jun  8 14:00:14 garcia fetchnews[9187]: wrote /var/spool/news/alt/religion/kibology/.overview
Jun  8 14:00:14 garcia fetchnews[9187]: reading XOVER info from /var/spool/news/alt/usenet/kooks/5830
... snipped ...
Jun  8 14:00:15 garcia fetchnews[9187]: reading XOVER info from /var/spool/news/rec/arts/tv/1156
Jun  8 14:00:15 garcia fetchnews[9187]: reading XOVER info from /var/spool/news/rec/arts/tv/1157
Jun  8 14:00:15 garcia fetchnews[9187]: updated 10 lines in /var/spool/news/rec/arts/tv/.overview
Jun  8 14:00:15 garcia fetchnews[9187]: wrote /var/spool/news/rec/arts/tv/.overview
Jun  8 14:00:15 garcia fetchnews[9187]: Process done.