[Pan-users] Re: 0.14.2 downloading way too much

[Duncan]

Beartooth posted <address@hidden>, excerpted
below,  on Thu, 22 Jan 2004 12:50:57 -0500:

> 
> Suddenly when I click on a group, Pan downloads literally tens of
> thousands of headers. I know I've marked most of these read and deleted
> them at least once; I do that at irregular intervals with old stuff across
> the board, and some are given as last fall or before.
> 
> Is this a one-time freak because I told it yesterday no longer to download
> headers before I even click on a group? Or have I busted something?

It should be one-time, but not due to that.  Apparently pan's tracking of
d/led headers got screwed up, somehow.  The most common reasons for that
are deleted or corrupted data files locally, or news server renumbering,
either due to changing servers,  or corrupted and replaced data at their
end.

If you wish, you can select More Download Options.. (either from the
newsgroups menu or from the right-click context menu when clicking on the
newsgroup, having previously switched to it), and tell PAN to fetch a
specific number of headers, rather than all of them at once.  That'll
prevent tens of thousands to millions (in some groups) of overviews being
downloaded at once.    (Overviews is the technically correct term, because
only SOME of the headers are downloaded, those in the "overview", not ALL
of them, altho headers is the common if not absolutely accurate term used
in many news clients including PAN.)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin