[Pan-users] Re: Re: Could not decode article - file may be corrupt/incomplete

[Duncan]

Martijn Otto posted <address@hidden>,
excerpted below,  on Mon, 23 Jan 2006 22:58:11 +0100:

>> I'm not sure how BNR2 works, but does it possibly automatically integrate
>> the PAR files when needed to rebuild the post?  If so, that might explain
>> it, as PAN doesn't.
>>
> 
> It does not, and even if it did, i do not believe that would explain
> this behaviour. PAN isn't able to decode any of the articles. The
> directory where i decode it to stays completely empty, not even the
> PAR files get through.
> 
> The problem, as i see it, lies in the decoding of the message. For
> some reason, BNR2 is able to decode it, where PAN is not.

You did mention it's yEnc, also.  yEnc includes in the specification a
CRC-32 (IIRC, something similar if not) check built-in, with the
check-value posted with the encoded file.  I believe PAN will refuse to
decode the file if the result doesn't match the included check-value, as
I've seen messages to that effect on occasion.  Maybe BNR2 either doesn't
verify the check-value, or assumes you'd rather have the corrupt file than
no file, if it doesn't verify, and decodes it anyway?

One of the reasons I wanted to see the posts for myself was to
independently verify whether they passed the check, here, and to check out
a couple other possibilities, such as whether the poster is using a
non-standard posting client that might be getting it wrong, somehow,
whether /everything/ by this poster ends up bad, whether perhaps it's a
particular server mangling it, etc.

>> Unfortunately, the named posts have scrolled off the server, here (or got
>> caught in my filters), so can't check them.  I'm just using my ISP's
>> server, which is rather crappy for multi-part binaries, which I don't do
>> much of anyway (and I use klibido for all my binaries, anyway), so it's
>> probably the server.
>>
> 
> That's strange, they were posted only about three days ago. Maybe
> someone else has some insight as to what is going on.

I /said/ it was rather crappy for multi-part binaries.  2-3 days is about
it (single-part binaries like the still-pix groups have a longer
retention, a couple weeks, anyways, and text groups are longer still,
months), and even then, completion is apparently pretty bad, according to
those that /do/ use the multi-part groups regularly, right now. 
Unfortunately, a good ISP-bundled news provider is rather hard to find --
they either outsource to someone like supernews or giganews and
ridiculously cap downloads (a gig a month isn't uncommon, sometimes
INCLUDING overview downloads, or they allow unlimited downloads but cap
the access rate to low-single-digit multiples of dialup -- say 128 or
256kbps total of multiple connections), or handle it themselves and simply
can't keep up with the two-terabyte-plus-and-growing-per-day full
newsfeeds.  Increasingly, ISPs are either not providing bundled news at
all, or only a limited text-group feed.

Thus, a serious news hound is increasingly HAVING to have at least one
dedicated news provider, either for backups, or as their main service, if
one is unlucky enough to have a gig-a-news-a-month capped service, or /no/
binary news bundled with the ISP services.  I've always argued that the
serious binary news hound will have at least two sources anyway, but while
it /used/ to be that one could either buy a reliable backkup at a higher
per-gig cost or a not-quite-as-reliable-but-cheap flat-rate service,
depending on the /other/ one of the two from your ISP, it's increasingly
the case that the ISP is now /both/ unreliable and low-bulk, because it's
/so/ unreliable/ or /so/ low-bulk, so a serious biinary news hound has to
fork over additional fees to TWO third party news providers, as the ISP's
service is neither bulky enough to substitute for the flat-rate service
nor reliable enough to substitute for the backup service.

Anyway, as I said, I'm only using my ISP's services, recognizing that I
don't see everything, but it's good enough for single-part binaries, which
is mostly what I do in binaries, and I don't consider myself all that
serious a binary news hound anyway, so it's sufficient for me.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html