INS: Nntpbld Rebuild of News Server Is Slow

• Microsoft Commercial Internet System, version 1.0

SYMPTOMS

After a news server hash table or Group.1st becomes corrupted, it is often necessary to rebuild the server by running the following command:

   nntpbld -c -G -e

CAUSE

The original version of Nntpbld.exe is not multithreaded and it deletes the existing *.xix files before it attempts to rebuild the server. This adds a great deal of time to the rebuild process.

RESOLUTION

Microsoft has added two switches to the nntpbld command with Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Commercial Internet System. The first switch allows the administrator to bypass deleting the *.xix files, and use the information that already exists to rebuild the hash tables. The second switch allows the command to be multithreaded. These two enhancements greatly decrease the amount of time required to rebuild a news server.

This update adds two switches to the Nntpbld.exe program. The information about these switches is not contained in the documentation.

-w Switch

This switch allows the nntpbld command to be multithreaded. This increases the performance of the rebuild with no negative side effects. An example of this command would be

   nntpbld -w <n>

-x Switch

If this switch is specified, nntpbld does not rebuild the *.xix files; it uses the existing information to rebuild the server. The downside of running a rebuild with this switch is that if the *.xix files are already corrupted, using this command may cause the xover data for that group to also become corrupted, thus causing more problems. Therefore, Microsoft recommends that you run the command and include the -x switch

   nntpbld -x -w 64

   nntpbld -w 64

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Commercial Internet System, version 1.0. We are researching this problem and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.