Re: [Pan-users] Preserving Pan Session History Between XP/Mandriva

[David Shochat]

Christopher Boorman wrote:
> David Shochat wrote:
> > Christopher Boorman wrote:
> > > I've got my thunderbird mail folder and my firefox bookmarks stored 
> > > on a
> > > separate drive so that whatever I do in one application when I'm in
> > > Mandriva will be reflected in XP and vice versa. I'm looking for a 
> > > way to
> > > do this in Pan. Has anyone else had success with this?
> > I haven't actually done this, but it sounds like another job for 
> > PAN_HOME. On the Linux side, there are numerous ways to start pan 
> > conveniently with PAN_HOME set to a particular value.  E.g. on my 
> > system, if I wanted my pan database on my vfat format USB drive, I 
> > could set PAN_HOME to /media/SEA_DISC/pan. Actually, I just tried at 
> > a bash shell prompt:
> > PAN_HOME=/media/SEA_DISC/pan pan
> > and it worked like a charm. I provided a news server, visited a 
> > group, read one article and exited. A pan directory had been created 
> > on the drive and it contained the usual things. Now I'm sure that you 
> > can do something similar in Windows (maybe you would set PAN_HOME to 
> > something like E:\pan). Now the only question is whether Windows pan 
> > will tolerate the Unix text file format.  And when you exit from 
> > Windows pan, maybe it will write DOS/Windows format and the question 
> > will be whether the Linux version can handle that. Only way to find 
> > out is to try. I don't do Windows at home, so I cannot do the full test.
> > -- David
> Where would I find PAN_HOME? What text file would this be part of?
My response deals with the Linux side; you'll have to get a Windows 
person to tell you how to do the equivalent thing on the Windows side.
You could create a script, called for example, shared_pan, using a text 
editor. In this file, you could place the following 3 lines (I'm 
assuming my example here; you'd have to change it to suit the shared 
storage device that you actually have):

#!/bin/bash
export PAN_HOME=/media/SEA_DISC/pan
pan

Now you need to make sure your script file is executable using the shell 
command:
chmod 755 shared_pan
Now suppose you have placed this file in a directory named bin in your 
home directory. For me, that would mean it would be in /home/david/bin.
Then this command would launch pan with the environment variable setting:
/home/david/bin/shared_pan
You could type that at a shell prompt, or put it as the command in a 
panel launcher, allowing you to launch pan, with its database on your 
shared drive, with a single click of the launcher. If you don't know how 
to create a panel launcher, tell us what desktop you're running (e.g. 
GNOME or KDE) and someone here will be able to tell you how.
-- David