I'm suddenly being deluged with tons of "You are not allowed to use inter-server DISTRIBUTE control keywords" errors. What's going on?


When this occurs, it's usually right after you've updated BITEARN NODES, and usually because you ftp'd the file directly into the directory where it belongs while LISTSERV was running. You can fix this by issuing the NODESGEN command, either by mail or from the console, to rebuild the routing files, or simply by stopping and restarting LISTSERV.


Another cause of this problem can be that you've ftp'd BITEARN.NODES in binary rather than ASCII mode. If so, you'll have to ftp the file again.


The proper method for updating BITEARN.NODES is to ftp the file into a scratch directory, stop LISTSERV, move the file into the appropriate directory, then restart LISTSERV. It's never a good idea to overwrite the file when LISTSERV may be accessing it. If you're mirroring BITEARN.NODES, be sure that your mirror is not pointing to the working copy; always mirror to a directory not used by LISTSERV.


BITEARN NODES can be updated automatically for all versions (not just VM as in the past) and it should never be necessary to update by hand as long as you are running with RUNMODE=NETWORKED and your server is registered.


That said, BITEARN NODES has not been updated in quite a few years (because BITNET is no longer in operation) and it is unlikely anyone will see this error again.