From: nick@kralizec.zeta.org.au (Nick Andrew) Subject: NN thrashes .newsrc file (esp over NFS) Date: 15 Aug 1993 00:26:51 +1000
I noticed this problem while running NN over NFS. Every time I go to a new
group NN rewrites the .newsrc file in its entirety. I am running NN 6.4.18.
I've been running NN locally for years and never noticed it. I can guess
then that it isn't a problem when done locally.
However if I run it over NFS I can hear the disk thrash at the time of
writing. Moreover, it takes longer. A looping shell script (doing a
regular ls -l .newsrc) shows the file growing.
NFS is a stateless protocol. Does this imply that my server (Sun 3/60 running
SunOS 4.0) biod must open and close the .newsrc file many times?
The client is a Linux box. I have heard that Linux only supports small
block sizes (rsize=1024,wsize=1024). Does this contribute to the thrashing?
My .newsrc is about 32k long.
Finally although I appreciate Nn's motive in keeping my .newsrc up-to-date,
surely this effort is wasted. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to update
the file every 5 minutes and on exit only?
Nick.
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