Re: [Pan-users] Pan rules/filters

[Duncan]

John Wendel posted on Sun, 22 Jan 2017 16:03:09 -0800 as excerpted:

> On 01/22/2017 12:26 PM, Dave wrote:
>> Is there any way at all to get Pan to filter and DELETE posts on sight?
>>
>> There's a binaries group currently being swamped by very, very large
>> numbers of post.  So many that Pan and the OS is not reacting well to a
>> group with a couple million posts in it.  ie all RAM used up (almost
>> never happens on my 8GB PC) and swap getting thrashed to the extent
>> that the PC almost grinds to a halt despite there being plenty of CPU
>> power spare.
>>
>> On at least one occasion, the memory/page management choked and
>> crashed/reboot the PC and that's a very unusual thing to happen on
>> FreeBSD!
>>
> I feel your pain!  You can set a filter to ignore the user, but it won't
> stop the downloads.

It should be possible to actually auto-delete posts based on filter 
results (if it's not there's a bug), but it's a *TWO* step process, and 
you guys seem to be only getting the first one.

First, to cover the before-download/after-download question from the 
other subthread:

As Dave suggested, scores based on headers in the "overview file", which 
is actually what's downloaded when so-called "headers" are downloaded, 
take effect when pan processes the overviews, before the posts are 
actually downloaded.  This includes message-id, subject, author, date, 
lines and/or size (I believe that's a server option), xref (I think), and 
references.  Other headers may be included at the option of the server 
admin, but aren't included in standard overviews.

Scores based on headers not in the overview file can only take effect 
after the full message is downloaded, as that's when pan gets those 
headers.  Somewhat inconvenient, but if your group-spammer is nym-
shifting or something and you have nothing to go on but out of overview 
headers, it can still be better than having to deal with it by hand.

As for step two, getting pan to actually take /action/ based on the 
scores, that's what pan's preferences dialog, actions tab, is all about.  
Obviously, you're after the "delete articles scoring at" option on that 
tab, but unless the score lines you'll be using have been tested for 
awhile and you are comfortable with the number of false-positives you 
get, if any, I'd recommend doing a limited run without deleting first, 
just to be sure the scores are actually working the way you expect them 
to.

It's worth noting that the score levels on the action options correspond 
to the levels in the colors tab as well as the ones under the view menu, 
header pane, match scores, section.   A reasonable setting for actions 
might be auto-download watched (+9999 or above, optionally you can set 
this to high, +5000 to +9998 or medium, +1 to +4999, instead), auto-
delete ignored (-9999 or below), and auto-mark-read low (-1 or below).  

Assuming you use the hide read posts option, the auto-mark-read "low" 
score zone can then be used for posts you don't normally want to see, 
thus the auto-mark-read, but you might conceivably want to go back and 
see the full post if someone replies to it.  If the post is already 
deleted, that's quite difficult, while if it's simply auto-marked-read, 
you can still toggle view read and find the parent post that was quoted 
but that you had auto-marked-read, in ordered to get the full context in 
which the reply was posted.

-- 
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