[Pan-users] Re: Old Pan v0.14.2.91 keeps adding removed newsgroups into my .newsrc.

[Duncan]

Phillip Pi <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Sun, 19 Apr
2009 13:56:42 -0700:

> I use both Tin and Pan v0.14.2.91 (don't really like the newer one) to
> share the .newsrc file (not at the same time obviously) in Debian. I
> unsubscribed some newsgroups.
> 
> By hand, I deleted all these unwanted newgroups with "!" in my .newsrc
> file:
> ald.binaries.vcdquality! 1-2
> alt.binaries.alias! 1-3543
[more groups snipped]

> Everytime I load Pan and exit, these comes back! How do I remove these
> permanentely? Tin doesn't put these back after running and exiting. I
> even tried reimporting my .newsrc with unwanted newsgroups (no !s) in
> Pan, and exiting but I still see these unwanted newsgroups. :(
> 
> So, what is up? Thank you in advnace. :)

The key to understanding what's going on here is to realize that while 
old-pan /sort/ of supported newsrc files, that wasn't its main record of 
things -- it had its own database format and basically only exported to 
newsrc files so it could work cooperatively with other news clients.  
Thus, it's seeing the data in the newsrcs and using that to update its 
own database, then exporting the combined information back to the newsrc 
files when it is closed.

What you have to do is unsubscribe from the groups in question from 
inside pan, then immediately close pan, and it should take.  You can then 
open the newsrcs manually (or using tin may work as well, I don't use it 
so don't know) and delete the old group information if desired.  If you 
do so you should probably do the same thing to the pan record, or, while 
it shouldn't resubscribe them, it'll probably put the record back of the 
messages you had read when it closes again.

I know you have reasons to use old-pan instead of new-pan and I respect 
that.  However, it is worth pointing out that new-pan uses the newsrc 
files directly -- tho it stores other non-newsrc info in other files 
too.  Since new-pan uses the newsrc files directly, it shouldn't have 
this issue.  The one caveat there would be if you have multiple servers, 
since the newsrc format apparently has no provision for that.  Thus,
new-pan uses multiple newsrcs, identified by number rather than server 
name, and if you were to try sharing them, you'd need to ensure that you 
configured each client (by hand) to point at the same newsrc for the same 
server, or there'd be chaos.

As they say, HTH! =:^)

-- 
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