On Mon, 8 Jun 1998 17:33:38 EDT, Paul M Karagianis <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>We have two (that I know of) lists that had digests and were working fine,
>that have had old archives deleted to save space (and almost certainly
>some other manual finger-poking by beginner owners) and have since had a
>digest failure.  The digests are reportedly not distributed, but after a
>month or less the server sticks the list into hold because the now-huge
>digest exceeds the (default?) maximum number of lines and the attempt to
>distribute the "extra" digest blows up due to the size.  That is, the
>list is OK, the owners do something odd, the lists go into a state where
>nightly distribution stops, the digests grow (really big) until they trip
>off a exceeds-line-count distribution which croaks due to size and locks
>the list.

We have this problem on Ease-Home which runs with the 'ISP Scope' option that
allows you to specify list directory quotas.  But what is really going on is
somehow (frequently due to Owner editing the current message archive file
without first manually holding the list) is the current archive file and the
digest get out-of-sync.  i.e. the digest is allowed to get bigger than the
current archive.  This prevents the digest from being distributed, although it
will still accumulate messages.

Normally the current archive and digest are either the same size (at some time
they both start at 0 and grow together), or the archive is bigger (because it
includes yesterday's posts as well as today's).

The solution is not just to manually delete the digest file.  Instead you need
to change the existing header line from Digest= Yes, Same, Daily (or whatever
it really says) to  Digest= No and then PUT the revised header.  You will get
back a message:  "The header of XXXXX-L list has been successfuly replaced.
The old digest file has been erased."

This not only deletes the digest file, but also resets the internal counters
that were out of kilter.  Then you can change the Digest= line back to what it
was, PUT the hedaer again and FREE the list.  Of course the digest is lost,
but in the circumstances you describe it isn't much use anyway.