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NEWS SERVER DOWN
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We received the following from ABSnet just before midnight Tuesday
(3/4/97):
 
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The NetNews Server has managed to corrupt itself and crash again, and
will most likely be unavailable until sometime Wednesday evening.  There
is a bug in the OS kernel that has caused this to happen at times, and
since we just received an OS update to correct this I felt it best to take
the extra time and correct the trouble.  So I will be reloading the
operating system, and then restarting the news server as though it's a
fresh install to get around any hidden gotcha's.
 
When I do this message counts will start back at 0, so you may need to
clear your .rc files so it thinks there is actually news.  Most readers
will automatically handle this, but I found out from several user reports
that this apparently isn't the case for all readers. 
 
Sorry for the inconvenience, and I hope this major overhaul will correct
the intermittent trouble we have been having...
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The message count problem mentioned by Howard refers to the fact that when
the server is brought back up, the news articles on the server will be
renumbered to start at zero.  In other words, if the current messages in
"alt.wombats.tanzanian" were formerly numbered 1000 - 2000, they will now
be numbered 0 - 1000.  Your news reader, which keeps track of what you
have read by article number, will think that the highest number you have
read in alt.wombats.tanzanian is 2000.  Because the highest number is now
1000, your news reader will report that there are no new messages.
 
To solve the problem you need to reset your news reader's message counters
back to zero.  How you do this will depend on what news reader you are
using, and to cover all the possibilities here would make this a VERY long
message.  Many of you went through this when news.abs.net crashed in
January, so should be old hands at it by now.  If you need help sorting it
out, please don't hesitate to call the BCPL Help Desk at 410-887-3297 or
send e-mail to oz@mail.bcpl.lib.md.us.