[Pan-users] Re: Hide user agent?

[Duncan]

Clunk Werclick
<address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Wed, 29 Jul 2009
10:54:57 +0100:

> Is it possible to change the user agent string at all or withhold it? I
> don't want it in my posts for privacy reasons but can't find an option
> to kill it?
> 
> User-Agent: Pan/0.132 (Waxed in Black)

Sure, but as with a number of other pan options, it's apparently one of 
those settings Gnome folks like to think is too complicated for a normal 
user, so it's not exposed in the GUI, only in the config file.

All pan's config and data is stored in its data dir, ~/.pan2/ by 
default.  The setting in question appears in the preferences.xml file.  
Search for "user-agent" and you should find it.  Set that false and you 
should be in business. =:^)

(That's for 0.133 anyway, but AFAIK it has been there for awhile.  Do 
note that unpatched 0.132 had a security vuln a bit over a year ago.  
0.133 fixed that and a few other things, but your distribution, assuming 
that's how you got your pan, may have integrated the patch into 0.132.)

As pan is open source, you can of course download the sources, grep for 
that string (or just "Waxed" should find it), change it as desired, and 
recompile.  However, it doesn't appear there's a non-rebuilding user 
exposed setting, even in the config file, for that, just to toggle the 
header on and off.

Or, if you prefer, the string is also exposed in the binary (at least as 
compiled for amd64), so with a hex editor it'd be no problem to directly 
edit it there, taking all the usual precautions when directly editing a 
binary file, of course.

-- 
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