Re: [Pan-users] How to fix "Unable to save ... Permission denied"?

[Beartooth]

On Sat, 28 Jan 2012 04:17:25 +0000, Duncan wrote:

> Beartooth posted on Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:58:17 +0000 as excerpted:

>>      Uurrrkkkk! I spoke too soon. Even from servers like news.grc.com
>> and news.opera.no I get the miserable giganews whine. Should Pan really
>> be going to those by way of giganews??
> 
> Here's the deal.  Pan uses standard newsrc style files for keeping track
> of subscribed groups, messages already seen, etc.  All fine and good but
> for one problem: the newsrc format assumes a single news server only!
> 
> Pan is of course multi-server, so it must use multiple newsrc files.  By
> default these are named newsrc-1, newsrc-2, etc, based on the order you
> setup the servers.
> 
> Meanwhile, pan stores its server information, including a mapping of
> which newsrc file corresponds to which server along with the address for
> each server, associated username and password if any, per-server article
> expiration policy, server rank (normal or backup), etc, in servers.xml.
> 
> What apparently happened is that somehow, when you edited servers.xml to
> change the path from btth to bttth, you changed some of the other
> information in servers.xml as well.  Either that or the mapping of
> newsrc files to server got screwed up, somehow -- maybe you created them
> in a different order in the new location so newsrc-1 (for instance) is
> gmane's newsrc file in the old location, but giganew's newsrc file in
> the new one.
> 
> 
> There's two alternatives for fixing things.
> 
> 1) Delete all newsrc files along with the servers.xml file, starting
> over with a new server configuration.  In addition to having to
> reconfigure each server with address, username, etc, you'll lose track
> of which groups you had subscribed and which messages were read and
> which haven't been, so you'll have to resubscribe your groups and
> download headers and mark some messages read again, that you've already
> seen.
> 
> This involves some work, but since you delete the affected files and
> reconfigure the data in them, the chance of screwing anything else up is
> much smaller.
> 
> 2) You can try to hand-edit servers.xml, possibly by copying over a
> backup version, being more careful this time to edit /only/ the btth
> string, changing it to bttth.
> 
> Depending on how you setup the new location, it's also possible that
> you'll have to open the newsrc files and sort out which one belongs to
> which server, editing the filenames in servers.xml to point to the
> correct ones.
> 
> This is what I'd do here, but it has the possibility of further screwing
> up pan if you get it wrong.  Given previous history, I'd recommend that
> you stick with option 1 as it involves more work, but is the safer
> option with less that can go wrong, since you're not hand editing files
> but rather using the pan GUI to re-setup your servers, subscribed
> groups, etc.

        I found a kludge. I managed to get giganews to reset my password; 
changed the newsserver setting to the new password; and that seems to've 
made things work again.

        I suspect, of course, that I'm getting things through giganews 
that I'd do better to get direct from grc.com or opera.no. It's a 
stopgap, and iirc it's the French who have a proverb saying nothing is so 
permanent as a temporary solution. Am I setting myself up for oncoming 
disaster?

        What I did before, btw, was to open servers.xml with gedit, and 
just tell it to find and replace btth with bttth everywhere.

-- 
Beartooth Staffwright, Not Quite Clueless Linux Power User
Life consists of senior moments, 
with occasional bursts of lucidity.