XFOR: INS: NNTPBLD Takes Too Long to Rebuild a Server (170064)

SYMPTOMS

When an MCIS Internet News Server (INS) fails due to an unexpected situation, such as loss of power, disk failure, and so forth, you must rebuild the server using the command:

nntpbld -c -G -e

When you use this command, it may take from 24 to 48 hours for the rebuild to complete and allow the server to be put back online.

RESOLUTION

Nntpbld.exe was modified to include two new command line switches that can greatly reduce the amount of time to rebuild a server.

The new command line switches are not be listed when you enter this command at a command prompt:

nntpbld -?

New Switches

-x      If this switch is specified, nntpbld will avoid rebuilding the XIX
        index files. Currently, nntpbld deletes all XIX files in its first
        pass through the news tree and then rebuilds them while scanning
        NWS articles. Because XIX files are almost as stable as NWS files,
        in most cases it makes sense to not delete and rebuild them. This
        saves the overhead of lots of WriteFile() calls.

        NOTE: This switch should be used when it is reasonably certain
that
        Only the hash tables are corrupted. The safest course of action,
if
        the extent of the corruption is not known, is to not use this
        switch.

-w n    Where n is the number of threads to use. The maximum number of
        threads is 64. Using 0 for the value of n results in the number of
        threads being 2 times the number of processors.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Commercial Internet System version 1.0. This problem has been corrected in the latest U.S. Service Pack for Microsoft Commercial Internet System version 1.0. For information on obtaining the Service Pack, query on the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: