Re: [Pan-users] Can No Longer View or Download Full Newsgroup List

[David Kelly]

On May 21, 2004, at 12:13 PM, Emily Jackson wrote:

> This problem affects both Pan 0.14.2 and 0.14.2.91 [Mac OS X 10.3.3]; 
> if
> I try to view the full newsgroup list, Pan crashes with the following
> error:
>
> ** ERROR **: file pan-object.c: line 68 (pan_object_unref): assertion
> failed: (o->ref_count>=0)
> aborting...
> Abort
>
> I tried downloading the full newsgroup list, and just before the list
> finished downloading, Pan aborted with the same error. I tried
> re-compiling and rebuilding Pan from scratch, but that didn't help.
> *Any* help would be most appreciated.

Go look at the logs in System Profiler (blue Apple menu, About This 
Mac, More Info... Logs is last in the column on the left). I am 
guessing you hit a process memory allocation limit by trying to 
download headers from a large group.

Have recently had the same problems with Pan on FreeBSD. Eventually got 
tired of the problem and limited my "All Headers" download to a cool 
million. Then before the machine crashed found 700,000 to delete. Pan 
works much better and faster with only 300k messages in a group to deal 
with at a time.

That was the big thing I learned, that "delete" only removes the header 
from the local header listing rather than attempt to cancel the message 
at the news server. That proper use of delete in Pan will speed things 
up and reduce resource consumption.

In a tcsh shell (forgot if tcsh or bash was default in Terminal, its 
tcsh for me) the command "limits" and "limits -h" will show current 
process limits and hard (the ones which can not be defeated without 
kernel changes) process limits. This route is of questionable use as I 
doubt your Pan is launched from a Terminal shell. Off the top of my 
head I don't know how to control the environment space on processes 
launched by Finder but know There Is A Way.

Takes a lot of memory resources to track 1E6 messages which is more 
common these days.

I use PC hardware running FreeBSD to do the grunt work. A dual G4-867 
MDD to do fun stuff.

--
David Kelly N4HHE, address@hidden
========================================================================
Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.