[Dxspider-support] Startup Errors and Subsequent Crash

[Dave Hawes]

Running Build 57.146 on Win98Se

Summary:
1.  More evidence of problems with latest build and the message 
system.
2.  Possibly corrupt dupefile causing crash upon receipt of PC11.


Here is a clip from the debug file of what I saw this morning:

1036556301^orft we jolly well go ...
1036556301^queue msg (0)
1036556301^Msgno 2 expunged
1036556301^Msgno 3 expunged
1036556301^Msgno 4 expunged
1036556301^Msgno 5 expunged
1036556301^Msgno 6 expunged
1036556301^Use of uninitialized value in numeric ge (>=) at 
/spider/perl/DXDupe.pm line 78.
[There were a total of 228 lines in the debug file, exactly the same as 
the above line.  Deleted to save space in this e-mail.]
1036556308^AGW Register W3FRC Successful

First, I only had messages 2-6 in the directory, and they were all 
deleted upon startup of Spider.  This bug has been reported by 
others, and I now join that group.  The message system is pretty much 
useless in its current state.

Then, the node crashed soon after, apparently upon the receipt of a 
PC11 (DX spot).

Since the startup errors were from the DXDupe.pm file, I suspected 
something wrong with the dupe system.  I found the file "dupefile" and 
deleted it.  It was over 40M in size.  Is that a proper size?  Is this file 
something we as sysops need to watch in some way?  Anyway, after 
deleting the dupefile file, Spider started normally with no errors, and 
continues to this writing (only about 45 minutes).

73 - Dave N3RD