[Pan-users] Re: Pan "timing out"

[Duncan]

Ron Blizzard <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted
below, on  Fri, 29 May 2009 21:00:53 -0500:

> On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 5:08 AM, Duncan
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>> [The below comes across a bit strong.  Please understand it's nothing
>> personal.]
>>
> No, I'm sorry about the HTML. Hopefully I've turned it off. Gmail uses
> kind of odd terminology. I use this email exclusively for about three
> list serves -- so it shouldn't have HTML.

FWIW, it's still there, but I know you're working on it now.  I've never 
used gmail (I prefer gmane.org list2news and pan for lists, and don't 
particularly like webmail of any sort for my personal mail), but I've 
seen others say gmail is a bit strange in the regard of HTML mail 
options.  Someone claimed there was no way to set it permanently per 
address or even globally -- you had to remember to do it manually every 
time.  I'd find that extremely irritating, to the point I have trouble 
believing they'd not have at least a global option if not per-address 
(even MSOE did /that/), but as I said, I've never used it, so all I can 
do is go by what others have said.

> <SNIP>
> 
>> First, how many connections do you have pan configured to use

> As far as I know, I'm only using one connection at a time. I use two
> news groups, both text only. I'll have to check the error log (didn't
> even know to look there). Where would I look? And, it looks like I've
> already got Pan set to four connections -- I think that was the default.

The (high level) error log (pan calls it the event log) is accessible two 
ways.  It's in the file menu, under event log (and may or may not have an 
accelerator defined, I do here but I think I changed that one), and 
there's also the clickable little icon in the status bar at the bottom, 
to the far right.  If there are no error events logged, only information 
events, the icon will be a light bulb.  When it logs an error event it 
turns red, with a slash thru it.

For lower level stuff, start pan from a terminal window (or have it log 
STDERR and STDOUT to a file by setting a redirect in your menu entry or 
other pan launcher), and it'll spit out some information there as it 
runs.  If you want more info printed to the terminal, you can run pan 
with the (undocumented) --debug switch.

But I was talking about the higher level one, here.  If pan knows the 
connection died, it'll put it in the log.  If it doesn't, it won't be 
there.  I suspect it won't be or pan wouldn't hang as you said it does, 
but if it does print any errors, it could be useful knowing what they are.

>> Second, it'll be a bit of a chore to do it manually, but you can
>> probably use pan's offline feature to kill existing connections --
>> PROVIDED you do it before whatever times them out.
> 
> This sounds promising. I don't think it would be that big of a deal to
> type "L" when I'm about to write a longer response, then type "L" when
> I'm ready to post. I didn't even think about that. Thanks.

That's what peer help from newsgroups and mailing lists is all about. =:^)

>> Meanwhile, I have an educated guess at what the problem is.  Are you
>> direct-connecting to your modem, or are you using a router (noting that
>> some modems have a built-in router)?  The problem sounds to me very
>> much like a mis-configured NAPT that has WAY too short a timeout on
>> inactive TCP connections.  That's very typical of some cheap
>> crap-quality routers, tho it's technically possible (but far less
>> likely) to do it with a firewall on a direct-connected computer.
> 
> I'm using a Linksys router, and my computer is using a D-LINK wireless
> Ethernet adapter. This might be an issue, but it doesn't seem to give me
> trouble with other news readers.

Linksys.  Perhaps the famous WRT54G? (I see yes, below.)  If so, chances 
are you can run one of the community firmwares on it if you want.  I run 
OpenWRT as it's one of the most open ones, with more stuff to play with 
for the experts, but DD-WRT or Tomato or the like might be easier to 
configure for newbies.  I've read very good things about how easy Tomato 
is to use.  Note that there have been several versions of the WRT54G.  
Older ones and the newer GL version ran a Linux based firmware and had a 
bit more flash and memory than the newer straight G, which runs a non-
Linux based firmware (VxWorks based) by default.  There's now community 
Linux based firmware for it as well, but it's cut down somewhat from the 
standard versions due to the flash and memory constraints.

IIRC at least one of the newer Linksys N band routers can run with 
OpenWRT and probably the others as well.

Meanwhile, yes, some versions of their firmware WERE infamous for 
dropping inactive TCP connections.  If you choose not to run a community 
based version and that's entirely up to you, you may at least wish to 
check to see if Linksys has an firmware update available for it.  You 
/may/ also be able to reconfigure the timeouts manually by telnetting in 
-- I don't believe it's available from the web interface, but I'm not 
sure how locked down Linksys kept their firmware as I specifically bought 
the GL to put a community based firmware on and only ran the factory 
installed Linksys firmware a few hours.

BTW, also consider this:  There's malware going around that tries to bot 
those routers, regardless the firmware.  If AT ALL possible, you DO NOT 
want to allow configuration login from the WAN side, and you should keep 
the LAN side configuration set to wired-only login, no WLAN/wireless 
config login.  Also, the malware DOES try brute-forcing the login if it 
can get to it, so you want a reasonably strong password -- preferably as 
close to random as possible (so both upper and lowercase letters, 
numbers, punctuation), and a good 10 characters minimum, with 15 
characters or more even better.  A sentence out of a book, or say the 
third letter of every word in a paragraph, is a good way to start, then 
scramble that up by substituting numbers and punctuation for letters, and 
using a transposition or substitution cypher if not both on the result.  
Or, just use a fully random one and record it somewhere safe.

You should be able to google more on the malware, or I should be able to 
find you some article links if your google foo isn't working well, if you 
want more information on it.

> I'll look more into this. The Linksys router is running its newest
> available firmware.  I don't see a TCP timeout setting.

OK, so you're ahead of me on updating the firmware, and checked for a 
timeout setting.  =:^)  But as I said, if the factory firmware lets you 
at the timeout setting at all, I expect it to be thru the telnet/ssh 
remote console login (or by downloading the config file, editing it, then 
uploading it back, via FTP or whatever), not the web interface.  And it's 
up in the air whether they even let you at the setting.

>> So let us know what sort of router you have, if any
>>
> Okay, thanks. The router is a Linksys WRT54G. My wireless network
> adapter is a D-Link G730AP.
> 
> I really don't mind the offline/online option. But I'll report back if I
> find another solution -- and whether going offline/online option works.

FWIW, Linksys is /reasonably/ good quality, for the consumer level they 
sell at.  D-Link... not so much.  They're infamous for cheap quality 
hardware, as well as router firmware with various "issues".  But as long 
as it's just a wireless adapter and it's working well otherwise, I'd not 
worry too much about the D-Link adapter.  If it were dropping packets or 
something, you'd be having issues with other stuff as well.

On the WRT54G, as I said, there have been a number of revisions of it.  
Here's the wikipedia entry, with the list of revisions and how to tell 
what you have:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrt54g

But if the online/offline toggle works, that may be enough for you, 
particularly if you aren't the type that likes hacking their router.  
(FWIW, I'm even thinking about eventually trying Gentoo on mine, cross-
compiled on my main computer, of course, and may add extra SDCard 
storage, etc.  Or maybe I'll just upgrade to a more powerful router with 
even more options.  Time will tell.)

-- 
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