[Pan-users] Re: Newsfeed

[Duncan]

Beartooth <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Mon, 23 Mar 2009
16:52:52 +0000:

> On Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:23:16 +0000, Duncan wrote:
> 
>> Beartooth <address@hidden> posted
>> address@hidden,
>> excerpted below, on  Sun, 22 Mar 2009 18:12:34 +0000:
>       [...]
>> Sounds like you no longer have authorization to use that server -- or
>> at least the swva server is of that opinion...
> 
>       Their service had been dropping off, I don't know why, for weeks
> before they announced they were getting out of the business.

OK, I guess that eliminates all question as to why /that/ server quit 
authorizing...

>       [...]
>> The no headers thing... I'm not sure.  It could mean the groups aren't
>> active (the server doesn't get an active feed for them) on the servers
>> you still have.
> 
>       Bburg.general, for just one town, has been fairly inactive lately
> -- but not completely. Other groups, like va.general and va.forsale, are
> rarely inactive longer than a day or three.

>From below, sounds like bburg.* isn't on any server you have ATM, but the 
va.* groups are.  Other replies mention that giganews carries both...

>> There is, however, at least one pan bug that occasionally causes it not
>> to see messages on a group.  This bug has to do with messages cross-
>> posted to groups you've been following for awhile, but other than that
>> I've not been able to nail it down at all.  But pan won't fetch
>> messages for the group when it hits that bug.  If you start a new pan
>> instance or wipe the data on the old one, so pan forgets about the
>> cross-posted messages on the groups you've already been following, you
>> can then download messages for the new group without a problem, so it's
>> obviously a pan-side data bug, not a bug with the server or whatever.
> 
>       By wipe do you mean, for instance, moving all of .pan2 to some
> temporary location?? Or just the Groups folder in it? Or ...?

Well, in the experiments I did, moving just part of the pan2 folder 
didn't do any good, tho I'm sure it /has/ to be /some/ files there, /not/ 
the entire thing.  Moving the entire thing worked.  (Actually, I used a 
different pan instance, my testing instance, that had never subscribed to 
any of the groups in question.  But it was basically the equivalent of 
wiping everything but the server list, the scores file, and the 
preferences.  No group data at all, empty cache.)

>> I have a couple groups I'd like to follow but don't, because of this
>> bug.  It's very frustrating!  I wish I could say for sure whether you
>> are seeing the same bug or whether it's something simple, but I don't
>> know enough about the bug /or/ your setup to say --- UNLESS you can say
>> with relative certainty that there were no cross-posts between the
>> groups that don't seem to be getting messages and others you follow.
> 
>       Are you talking recent cross-posts by me? All by me? All period
> -- i.e., any ever by anyone? Ad does "others" mean all of mine?
> Rec.food.cooking, for instance, is subject to all the spam, cross-posts,
> and other ills known to usenet. The grc groups are almost completely
> free of such thing.

I'm talking cross-posts between the affected groups.

Getting specific, as you likely know I run Gentoo, and it was several of 
the gmane.linux.gentoo.* groups/lists.  I've been subscribed to 
the ...devel group/list for years.  They started a new one, ...project, 
for more political, less technical discussion.  But many of the first 
posts to project were cross-posted to devel as well, and due to the bug, 
even after subscribing to project, whenever I tell pan to get headers 
either for all subscribed groups or for just project, it returns 
nothing.  For some reason the fact that some of the messages on project 
were cross-posted to devel, where I read them before I tried subscribing 
to project, now has pan believing it has seen everything ever posted on 
project too, even tho it has really only seen a few cross-posted messages.

There seems to be no way to get pan to download any project messages 
without clearing everything in devel (and possibly a few other related 
gmane.linux.gentoo.* groups) first.  I /suspect/ that would fix it, and 
that I could then download all the messages for both groups together and 
project would work after that.  The problem is that there's some messages 
in devel that I have saved as "unread" that I don't want to lose track of.

Generalizing the specifics again, it seems that if you subscribe to one 
of several related groups with occasional crossposting between them 
(after all, they are related, so cross-posting will make sense at times), 
that at least in some cases, this bug prevents you from ever subscribing 
to any of the /other/ related groups and actually getting anything.

This is a very frustrating bug not only in the specifics, but because 
that exact scenario is likely to be rather common -- someone finds a 
group they like, subscribes to it, then later discovers the other related 
group and tries to subscribe to it as well, except that the cross-
postings from the first subscribed group now keep the second from ever 
getting any messages!

Now I'm not specifically privy to Charles' thinking on why he didn't 
follow thru on his original plan to reasonably quickly stabilize new-pan 
to a 1.0 version, but the existence of bugs such as this would seem one 
good reason not to do so.  Imagine someone new to pan trying it for the 
first time due to all the community PR that goes along with finally 
bumping a many years old project to the big 1.0.  Imagine that person 
then hitting a bug like this, where pan inexplicably won't download 
/anything/ for a freshly subscribed group, when their old news client 
works perfectly fine for that group.  Such a person is likely to conclude 
pan simply doesn't work, they don't know and don't care why, and will 
very likely never try it again.  Imagine this scenario repeated thousands 
of times...

This is one reason I'm glad pan did NOT go 1.0 just yet.  Unfortunately, 
as far as I know, no one has sufficiently characterized this bug well 
enough to actually trace it down and fix it.  I certainly hadn't.  That I 
knew it existed yet couldn't describe/characterize it in enough detail to 
make it reproducible and traceable, thus, fixable, made it even MORE 
frustrating to me!  I've been dealing with this thing for I think two 
years now!

Based on posts to this list, I'm nearly certain that at least one other 
person hit this bug and posted about it here, and there's a couple others 
that may have hit it... or possibly something similar if not exactly the 
same.

Anyway, in typing up the above I think I /may/ have finally come to a 
good enough understanding of the bug to do some testing and report it 
properly, such that it can be fixed.  In all those two years there was 
something I wasn't quite getting about the bug, something that wasn't 
clicking.  I couldn't quite figure out what it was, or how to describe 
the bug properly both to others possibly experiencing it here and for 
filing.  In describing it above, I think it finally clicked.  Now I can 
actually try testing it, and see if I'm right.

(FWIW, for others following, I don't expect it to make much sense to you, 
I think that pan isn't properly tracking the xrefs per group, and is 
therefore treating the newer group with a lower post count as entirely 
read, way past its actual high-water mark.  It's only triggered for 
groups with cross-posts because only those will include the higher xref 
of the busier/older group.  The problem is therefore very similar to what 
might happen if a server's xref post numbers are reset.  Now I just gotta 
test to see if I'm right, and file the bug if so or at least if I'm not 
proven wrong.)

OK, now back on thread topic...

>> In any case, one thing you CAN try (other than deleting your entire set
>> of pan data and starting over), is going into the group in question and
>> telling it to get ALL headers, not just new ones.
> 
>       With news.swva.net gone, bburg.general and bburg.forsale have
> disappeared from my list of subscriptions; and a search for bburg gets
> no hits at all.

>       Va.general and va.forsale are still on the list, and "get all
> headers" got nothing.

OK, as I said above, apparently no server you currently have configured, 
presumably including motzerella, carries the bburg.* hierarchy.  va.* is 
carried, but the servers you have that carry it may not be well connected 
enough to get most of the traffic for those groups -- they may only get 
the occasional post.

Or maybe you've hit a bug similar to the above... but I'd consider it 
unlikely under the circumstances.  I'd guess it's the server, not you/pan.

> 
>> Then ensure you have
>> view read messages toggled on, and maybe the new messages will show up
>> as already read.
> 
>       Where is that toggle? I don't find it.

View, header pane, match only unread articles.  Make sure there's NO 
checkmark by it.

(I said view read messages, which is the effect, but the labeling is the 
logical reverse, match/view unread messages only.)

>       Btw, I often delete what look to be uninteresting threads; in a
> couple of quiet groups, I've been known to delete everything. I don't
> recall whether any of these geographic groups are among them. Would that
> matter?

It /might/, if the fact that you can't see any messages is related to the 
bug above.  But there's likely a simpler explanation.

>       I tried unsubbing va.forsale and then resubbing it, telling Pan
> at several points to get all headers. I never got any.

>       I wasn't seeing a list of headers all marked read. I wasn't
> seeing any headers at all. Just a blank white header pane and a blank
> white body pane.

Both of those do sound like the bug above.  But it could be other things, 
too.  I can't say at this point.

>>>     I'm thinking I need yet another server besides motzarella; got
>>> any good ones??
>> 
>> Perhaps the "gold standard" is giganews, if you decide to go paid. 
>> They aren't what one would call "cheap", but they put a lot of effort
>> and money into ensuring that their news service is the best connected
>> possible, and if giganews doesn't have the post, it's relatively safe
>> to say few servers beyond the one the original poster used to post the
>> message, got it.
 
>       Verizon used to subcontract to Giganews for its feed(s), and I
> seem to recall once having some other provider that did, too. And
> news.verizon.com used to have not only the bburg and va hierarchies, but
> even the vatech one. And if memory serves, there were no limits.

It looks like others have confirmed your memory.

>> The saving grace for you is that you've said you aren't particularly
>> interested in binaries.  That means MUCH lower traffic, and
>> consequently, that you can knock off the expensive options right off
>> the bat.
> 
>       Is there any easy way to get a handle on my traffic? If I can get
> back to all the groups I want to follow, there'll be fifty or sixty of
> them, ranging between ones I check at least once a day, and ones I don't
> check even once a month. There'll also be some where I read almost
> everything, and some where I delete 90% and up without reading.
> 
>       Giganews's bottom ("jade") offer is 3 GB/mo, for $2.99 (which, I
> *think*, is also per month).

Yes, that'd be $2.99/mo.  And for all text, I think it's safe to say 3 GB/
mo you won't even come /close/ to.  I've heard of folks breaking a gig a 
month on only text, but that's EXTREMELY active text users.  More than 
likely, half a gig a month would be plenty.

So a 3 gig a month service should be fine.  There are certainly cheaper 
options and 3 gig a month is likely overkill for you, but if you value 
"just works" >= $3/mo, it should be a good fit.

The other "pay" option that would fit would be the block option some pay 
providers offer.  Basically, you buy 25 gig or so for $25 or less (a buck 
a gig is reasonable, but you can often find lower prices if you buy at 
the right time and place), and it either doesn't expire or it does but 
only after a year or two.  Comparing the above $3/mo which comes to $36/
year, the 25 gig for $25 would almost certainly be cheaper even if it 
expires in a year, since I doubt you use 2 gig a month.  IIRC it was 
astraweb's service that offers that.  They're good, but don't quite have 
the gold standard reputation giganews has.  It's also possible they don't 
offer the specific groups you follow, tho it's unlikely and you can 
certainly check before you buy.

So, it boils down to two questions:

1) Are you willing to pay for text access at all vs. more hassle but free?

2) Assuming you are willing to pay, would you rather pay $3/mo, $36/yr, 
for "gold standard" service, or roughly $25 up front, perhaps $1/mo 
(possibly less) to buy a 25 gig block, for "almost gold standard, most 
people won't see the difference"?

> 
>> Text-only also means that you're likely to be able to find a free
>> server that will work well for you if you try hard enough.  Many folks
>> like motzarella, which comes well recommended as a free server tho I've
>> never tried it.
> 
>       You seem to be telling me it is possible only to search provider
> by provider for groups; not to search for a group and find out which
> providers carry it. Right?

Pretty much, yes.  Each provider normally has a list of the groups they 
carry, so it's easy to search provider by provider for groups.  But to my 
knowledge there's no authoritative list of groups and the providers that 
carry them, so it's not as easy to get a list of providers that carry a 
specific group.

Assuming you have access to the groups in question, of course, there's 
nothing stopping you from asking in each group for recommended providers 
that carry the group.  That works in some cases, but it's not going to be 
an exhaustive list of providers, and you have to have current access to 
the groups in question in ordered to ask.

>       Are you saying you pay a flat fee, once, for a set number of GB,
> and not again till you've used that up? All the plans at giganews.com
> that I see today seem to charge per month. They also have a 10-day trial
> period that's download-only -- you can't post. (I suppose you could
> arrange to skip that, though they don't say how.)

Yes.  IIRC it was astraweb or astranews or some such, that normally does 
the flat fee for a block of a set number of gigs.  They're pretty good 
but don't have quite the gold standard rep giganews does.  As I said 
above, it's a question of what you value more, the couple bucks a month, 
or gold standard service.

-- 
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