[Pan-users] Re: Weirdness compounded : giganews on one machine but not another

[Duncan]

Beartooth posted <address@hidden>, excerpted
below,  on Thu, 09 Mar 2006 12:41:56 -0500:

> The little box lower left says Tasks 0/3 ; if I click on it, it shows the
> little icon as connected, and whatever groups  I've tried to look at on
> giganews as Queued; trying to restart it generally produces a message in
> the log saying, for instance : 
> 
> Thu, 09 Mar 2006 10:15:36 - pan - queue_requeue_failed_tasks: assertion 
> `queue_get_task_status(task) == QUEUE_TASK_STATUS_STOPPED' failed
> 
> What's wrong, and what do I do about it? 

Often, the problem is a bad socket open.  Network News Transmission
Protocol (NNTP) uses TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), which is a
connection based protocol.  A connection between the client (which
requests the connection) and the server (which listens for and accepts or
rejects the connection) is opened, and the data for the session is
transmitted over that connection.  (Actually, PAN allows up to four such
connections to a single server, provided the server also allows it.)  A
socket is the local machine representation of that connection.  (I'm
seriously simplifying things here.)

The problem is that there are several steps to opening up that connection
-- it's a negotiated process.  If any of those steps fails for some
reason, or if the machine fails  to properly record and track the state
data for that socket, the connection will remain half opened and half
closed.  Normally, it would expire after a few minutes (usually 15-ish
for news) and the connection would be broken, allowing the client (PAN's
end) to try again.  However, if the machine failed to track the socket
correctly, it may not clean up the broken pieces until the application
that created it is terminated.  At that point, the kernel normally cleans
up any loose ends.  (Again, I'm simplifying.  Sometimes the  loose ends
remain until the application that started the broken one terminates.) 
That appears to be what happened to you.  Restarting PAN allowed the 
kernel to clean up the broken sockets and new ones to be opened.

> Just on a hunch, what is Pan's cache, and what do I lose if I clear it?
> (Oh, and how? I know there's a way ....)

PAN's cache is the local copy of messages it has downloaded.  Clearing it
will clear all those messages -- not the overviews, just the messages
themselves (that is, the bodies -- unless you've copied them to a save
folder or saved them to a file, of course, that's separate from the cache).

One can also clear the overviews (aka headers), if desired.  That's a
separate task.

The cache can be cleared two different ways.  From within PAN, go to
preferences, behavior (first) tab, at the bottom.  You can choose to have
PAN automatically clear the cache at exit or not, and you can set the
cache size (up to 20 gigabytes, well, 20,000 megabytes).  Setting it to
zero and OK, then opening up prefs again and setting it back to the
desired size, will clear it too.

You can also clear it manually by deleting the actual files off the disk. 
With PAN closed, delete ~/.pan/data/messages/cache .  Do NOT delete the
entire messages dir unless you want to lose your folders as well.

-- 
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