b5jms list fixed [maintainer note]

[B5JMS Poster]

This is a message from the maintainer of B5JMS and B5JMS-DIGEST.

A few days ago the B5JMS list gotten truncated midway.  It resulted in over
700 subscribers getting removed from the list.  Being rather busy at work
these past couple of weeks, I only found out about it when Brent informed me
privately that there were problems.  After 36 hours, a dozen of restorals
from tape backups going as far as 10 days ago, and several hours of perl
scripting, the list is now restored to its full subscribership.  I made sure
to reapply all the recent subscribe and unsubscribe requests, and I am
fairly confident that I got the list pretty accurate.

The 736 subscribers who lost 7 days worth of B5JMS mail will receive it in
the form of 5 different B5JMS digests.  In order not to overwhelm anyone's
mail spool (I don't tend to repeat mistakes like that one :-) I will send
those 1-2 per day.

The b5jms-digest list had not gotten corrupted at all.  So if you were
subscribed to it, you still are.

In almost a year of running this list, such a major corruption happened only
once.  Back then I was able to figure the problem (filesystem was full,
could not allocate additional disk blocks, hence file got truncated).  This
time I was not able to find the source of the problem.  However, last time I
started backing up all of my b5jms maintainer mail, and it was useful in
this recovery.  I used it to "replay" all the un/subscribe requests.  Each
time I learn something new.  So from now on I also automatically back up (on
disk, not slow tapes) the subscribership files, every night.  Next time
something like this happens, I will be able to recover from it faster.

Thank you for being patient with me.  I've been so busy this summer that
sometimes I took days to reply to various maintainer requests.  Response
time should improve greatly starting September 3rd.  Also the promised
enhancements to the USENET digestifying scripts would be coming soon.

While I have your attention, two miscellaneous notes:

(1) The B5JMS plus B5JMS-DIGEST lists (combined) have reached a milestone on
August 8th --- the 2000th subscriber!

(2) I want to thank all of you who helped keep the hope alive --- by
participating in the online debates and voting, and especially for sending
those letters to the local stations and Warner Bros. asking to support B5.
I'm sure all of those helped to get B5 renewed for another season.


Until the next list maintenance disaster... :-)

B5JMS Poster.
Maintainer, B5JMS and B5JMS-DIGEST lists.
<b5jms-owner at majordomo.cs.columbia.edu>
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