Re: [Pan-users] "missing" articles

[Alberto BARSELLA]

Hi,

On Tue, 18 Mar 2003 at 10:18:20AM -0700, Duncan wrote:

> This isn't likely to be wrap-around.  More likely, it's due to the way the 
> server is handling it's articles, back-filling the numbering, which can mix 
> up some readers, including PAN.
[......]
> So far so good.  However, take for example my ISP, Cox, which has three news 
> servers.  To keep them syncronized, the numbers are assigned at a central 
> location, so if one server goes down, we can switch to one of the others 
> without having to d/l all headers again, since the numbers are all 
> syncronized on all three servers.
[.....]

Thanks for the explanation, I think you are right on spot.
My ISP has 6 newsserver all aliased to the same hostname.

> I might be wrong about this, as I haven't looked at the PAN innards to see, 
> but I think PAN normally tracks numbering individually, so this problem 
> shouldn't occur.  However, it's possible that when you mark an entire group 
> read, rather than marking the individual articles read (select all, mark as 
> read), it uses the highest article number seen to track that, and this may 
> cause the issue you saw.  Thus, I'd suggest only marking the individual 
> articles as read, probably using select all, mark as read, as I mentioned, 
> rather than mark group as read.  Hopefully, that cures the problem.

The problem is not with the articles appearing as "read", but with some
articles not appearing at all unless I do a "get all headers".
Is it possible that what you describe also affects "get new headers"?
I mean: it yesterday's count was 10000 and today's 11000, I suppose that
pan will download as "new headers" from 10001 to 11000.  In this case,
if one server is lagging behind (say by 500 articles), when switching to
it there are 500 articles which will never be downloaded.

> Of course, there may be other occasional instabilities or bugs, that cause 
> one-off problems.  However, it shouldn't occur on a regular basis.  If it 
> does, there's something else wrong.

I've seen it happen 2-3 times in 1.5 months.  Since my usage of pan is
very much "uniform" I'm more inclined to believe in a synchronization
problem with the servers.

Anyway what's important is to know that it can happen and how to solve
it.  A "get all headers" may be slower, but waiting for some days for
the missing parts to appear (and never getting them) is worse!

Bye,
Alberto
--
Alberto BARSELLA
** Beliefs are dangerous. Beliefs allow the mind to stop functioning.
A non-functioning mind is clinically dead.  Believe in nothing... **