[Pan-users] Re: gmane users, please check gmane.linux.gentoo.project for me

[Duncan]

walt <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Sat, 21 Jul 2007
21:35:35 +0000:

> On Sat, 21 Jul 2007 20:09:46 +0000, Duncan wrote:
> 
>> [New newsgroup gmane.linux.gentoo.project, subscribed but no posts.
>> Telnet troubleshooting shows 37 posts, but pan isn't seeing them.]
>> newsgroups.xov still has no entry for the group, and pan has created no
>> groups/gmane.linux.gentoo.project file at all.  The entry in the
>> appropriate newsrc file is as follows:
>> 
>> gmane.linux.gentoo.project: 3,6
> 
> Mine is gmane.linux.gentoo.project: 0-1,3,7,29

Thanks to both you an Frank.

I think this is the interesting one.  IINM (if I'm not mistaken), those 
numbers are the group sequence numbers (as seen in the xref headers), 
showing the messages marked as read.  The two I have listed are probably 
ones that were xposted to gmane.linux.gentoo.devel, where I would have 
read them, and pan would have marked them read in this group also.

That still doesn't explain why pan isn't seeing the others, or why even 
when I set pan to show read messages, those two don't show up, altho the 
latter part is partially explained if they were posted and I read them on 
devel before I subscribed to project.

I'm probably going to try manually deleting that entry and possibly a 
couple references in other files (with pan closed, of course), and see 
what it does when I reopen it.

>> No entry in newsgroups.set, tho I'm not sure there would be
>> until I actually posted.
> 
> Is 'newsgroups.set' a typo?  I don't have that file.

That's right, but looking at it, I think it's an older version of what is 
now group-preferences.  The entries in it all list the group and for each 
listing say UTF-8, as group preferences does for just /one/ of several 
settings per group.  It's probably from before the other group 
preferences were added.

> Here is the entry
> I have in newsgroups.xov:
> gmane.linux.gentoo.project 38 34 1:38 and the group file in the groups
> directory is 13167 bytes long.

As I said above, those simply aren't being created here at all.

>> If telnet news.gmane.org 119 says there's 37 posts in that group, and I
>> can actually pull them up in telnet using either group sequence number
>> or message-id, why isn't pan pulling them up?  Surely it's a bug, but
>> before I file it, is it specific to my pan (SVN commit 309....)
> 
> I'm at commit 310 now, but I doubt that means much.

It shouldn't.  I did a check and 310 was just a language file update 
(Vietnamese, AFAIK, 309 was a French language file update only), so 
affected pan operation not at all.  That's why I've not updated.

> I didn't see the group at all until I refreshed the groups list --
> I would try doing that again and see if it makes any difference.

Same here.  As I said, the group is relatively new.  Thus, it was just 
added to gmane.  Unlike some news clients, pan doesn't update the group 
list automatically.  I consider that a good thing, because in many cases, 
one isn't really interested in new groups most of the time, so why waste 
the resources.  Also, if a group temporarily disappears on the news 
server due to server config issues, I've had other clients delete the 
group, INCLUDING all the stuff I had stored locally for it!  THAT'S NOT 
NICE AT ALL!  That was actually OE, back in the day, and I doubt any 
decent news client would do it, but still, having it not check for new 
groups unless I tell it too is IMO a good thing.

Now that I know it's not pan-universal, I'll do just as you suggested, 
along with a bunch of other troubleshooting steps.  If others couldn't 
see any posts either, however, the nature of the troubleshooting would be 
rather different.  Thus the question, and thanks for the answers. =8^)

> This is clearly a case of evil spirits cursing your machine, so you
> must repeat the simple steps until you've exorcized them all.  For
> example, when I install a device driver in Windows I usually need to
> repeat the same obvious steps, which fail N times in a row and then
> succeed on try N+1.  Evil spirits are the only scientific explanation
> for these phenomena.

LOL!  I'll have to remember that!  It certainly fits, sometimes! =8^)

> Have you tried unsubscribing and deleting all the references to that
> group before re-subscribing?

I hadn't tried anything really serious yet.  Now that I know it's my 
install, I will be.  It's also narrowly possible it's not a bad config 
issue, but related to something on my machine, the version of gtk++ or 
gmime I'm running, the fact I'm on AMD64, the CXXFLAGS I used compiling 
pan, etc.  Still, I think it's more likely a one-time issue due to the 
confluence of a not quite ordered list/group rollout, timed against when 
gmane subscribed and when I subscribed thru gmane, or, your explanation, 
"evil spirits!"  =8^)  Either of the latter, and it should clear right up 
after I kill whatever memory pan has of the "evil" config.

I guess I'll find out, and will be sure to let everyone know what it was, 
to the level I figured it out myself anyway, when I do.

-- 
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