pathalias slowdown

[Dewey Paciaffi]

In article <RON.90May30172314 at mlfarm.uucp> ron at mlfarm.uucp (Ronald Florence) writes:
>We use pathalias (9.1 87/10/04) with Xenix 2.3.2, on a ps2/80 with six
>megabytes of ram.  Building our map normally takes ~2 minutes.
>
>The recent batch of maps apparently has taken our pathalias over some
>threshold.  Without the map u.usa.ca.1, the build takes the same ~2
>minutes.  With all of the maps included on the command line, pathalias
>churns and swaps, slowly growing in size.  An hour later, when I
>finally killed the process, it was at 5704K (according to ps); the
>machine was swapping furiously (the vmstat display made you want to
>cry); and the last message from the "-v" option in pathalias was
>still "***mapping".

Found this in comp.mail.misc, seems to be widespread :
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-In article <1990May29.182555.27806 at pmsmam.uucp> wwm at pmsmam.uucp (Bill Meahan) writes:

-> Since the latest distribution I've received from comp.mail.maps, my attempts
-> to build a new pathalias database result in pathalias hanging forever while
-> taking up about 4.5 MEGS of core.
-> 
-> After spending far too much time chasing the problem, I've found that
-> keeping u.usa.nm.1 out of the input stream solves(?) the problem.  Apparently
-> something in the lastest bunch of maps (which do NOT include nm.1 so far)
-> is inconsistent with the Apr 25 version of u.usa.nm.1.

-I ran into exactly the same problem.  The version of pathalias I've been
-using (pathalias9) runs into a loop... it cycles repeatedly between
-nodes "rt1", "rt1.lanl.gov", and "bcsinc".  rt1 and rt1.lanl.gov are one
-and the same, and there's a bi-directional private dead link between rt1
-and bcsinc.

-I have no idea why this particular combination causes pathalias to
-loop... it seems that it should work properly.

-I was able to resolve (work around) the problem by downloading the
-latest version of pathalias from uunet (~/mail/pathalias.Z).  This is a
-more recent version than the one I had been using... it supports the
-"adjust" clause, rather than the "-a" command-line option.  It seems to
-"eat" the current maps distribution without any distress.

-Ghu alone knows why it fixes things, though.

-- 
-Dave Platt                                             VOICE: (415) 493-8805
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Hope this helps those who may not have seen it...
-- 
Dewey Paciaffi
eddjp at althea.UUCP