eternal-september & Pan

[BruceS]

I recently went back to using a newsreader (Pan), rather than Google
Groups, and it's mostly working fine. I use the server eternal-
september.org, which I thought was recommended by someone (Keith?)
here. Unfortunately, I don't see any clc posts through it, though
other groups work. I see from GG that clc has been getting plenty of
activity, so it must be a problem with the server or my newsreader
config. Does anyone else here use eternal-september with Pan, and if
so, do you have any idea why clc doesn't show new activity but other
groups do?

 

[Vincenzo Mercuri]

I recently went back to using a newsreader (Pan), rather than Google
Groups, and it's mostly working fine. I use the server eternal-
september.org, which I thought was recommended by someone (Keith?)
here. Unfortunately, I don't see any clc posts through it, though
other groups work. I see from GG that clc has been getting plenty of
activity, so it must be a problem with the server or my newsreader
config. Does anyone else here use eternal-september with Pan, and if
so, do you have any idea why clc doesn't show new activity but other
groups do?

I used that server and Pan as newsreader, with no problems. Maybe you
have subscribed to c.l.c. but you are looking for it in the "Other
Groups" section? If so, you won't see it. It should be located in
"Subscribed Groups". If this is not what happened then go through the menu:

Edit -> Edit News Servers

and make sure the settings are right. Or you could Remove the server
and Add it again. The required fields to fill are:

Address: news.eternal-september.org
Port: 119
Username: ..
Password: ..

then click Ok. You will find comp.lang.c in "Other Groups" in the main
window on the left. So you should right click on it and "Subscribe".
After that you should find it in the "Subscribed Groups" section.

 

[Joe Pfeiffer]

I recently went back to using a newsreader (Pan), rather than Google
Groups, and it's mostly working fine. I use the server eternal-
september.org, which I thought was recommended by someone (Keith?)
here. Unfortunately, I don't see any clc posts through it, though
other groups work. I see from GG that clc has been getting plenty of
activity, so it must be a problem with the server or my newsreader
config. Does anyone else here use eternal-september with Pan, and if
so, do you have any idea why clc doesn't show new activity but other
groups do?

I use eternal-september, but with gnus inside emacs. To me, this
implies it must be something in your pan configuration.

 

[BruceS]

I used that server and Pan as newsreader, with no problems. Maybe you
have subscribed to c.l.c. but you are looking for it in the "Other
Groups" section? If so, you won't see it. It should be located in
"Subscribed Groups". If this is not what happened then go through the menu:

Edit -> Edit News Servers

and make sure the settings are right. Or you could Remove the server
and Add it again. The required fields to fill are:

Address: news.eternal-september.org
Port: 119
Username: ..
Password: ..

then click Ok. You will find comp.lang.c in "Other Groups" in the main
window on the left. So you should right click on it and "Subscribe".
After that you should find it in the "Subscribed Groups" section.

Thanks Vincenzo and Joe. It sounds like it must be a config problem.
The same server seems to work fine for other groups, so I don't get
it. clc and the others I read are all in my "subscribed" section,
it's just that clc keeps not showing any new articles after a "get new
headers from subscribed newsgroups", while the others do. I'll try
unsubscribing and resubscribing, and see if that changes anything. If
not, I think I'll try adding it as a second server, with just clc in
it, and see if anything is different. Thanks for confirming that this
server and pan work with clc.

 

[BruceS]

Thanks Vincenzo and Joe. It sounds like it must be a config problem.
The same server seems to work fine for other groups, so I don't get it.
clc and the others I read are all in my "subscribed" section, it's just
that clc keeps not showing any new articles after a "get new headers
from subscribed newsgroups", while the others do. I'll try
unsubscribing and resubscribing, and see if that changes anything. If
not, I think I'll try adding it as a second server, with just clc in
it, and see if anything is different. Thanks for confirming that this
server and pan work with clc.

Unsubscribing, then getting all headers from the "Other Groups" section
seems to have worked fine. I've resubscribed, and just now did another
"get new headers" and it picked up a new post by James Kuyper. I still
have no idea what was wrong, but if it just works from here on out, it
doesn't really matter.

 

[Paul]

Unsubscribing, then getting all headers from the "Other Groups" section
seems to have worked fine. I've resubscribed, and just now did another
"get new headers" and it picked up a new post by James Kuyper. I still
have no idea what was wrong, but if it just works from here on out, it
doesn't really matter.

eternal-september.org has two behaviors.

If you don't have an account (haven't applied for a username with the
administrator), then a limited number of groups can still be accessed.
The administrator did this, so people could ask questions in the support
group, which would be in that list.

If you forget to tick "always request authentication" with your newsreader,
that's also a potential failure. As the newsreader can connect without
attempting to log in, and again, you'd get the "short list" of groups.
The newsreader must be coaxed to send in your new username/password.

Once you acquire a username/password, set up the newsreader to send
the username/password, then you'll be in an "authenticated" session,
and upon refreshing the groups list, there should be thousands of
entries, including CLC.

*******

A server not requiring authentication (you don't apply for an account),
is aioe.org . It can function nicely as your backup server, if
E-S is down for maintenance. It has a limitation of 25 text posts
per day.

Paul

 

[BruceS]

eternal-september.org has two behaviors.

If you don't have an account (haven't applied for a username with the
administrator), then a limited number of groups can still be accessed.
The administrator did this, so people could ask questions in the support
group, which would be in that list.

If you forget to tick "always request authentication" with your
newsreader,
that's also a potential failure. As the newsreader can connect without
attempting to log in, and again, you'd get the "short list" of groups.
The newsreader must be coaxed to send in your new username/password.

Once you acquire a username/password, set up the newsreader to send the
username/password, then you'll be in an "authenticated" session,
and upon refreshing the groups list, there should be thousands of
entries, including CLC.

*******

A server not requiring authentication (you don't apply for an account),
is aioe.org . It can function nicely as your backup server, if E-S is
down for maintenance. It has a limitation of 25 text posts per day.

Paul

I don't see any checkbox in Pan for always requesting authentication. I
do have an account with e-s, and have the username/password set up in the
config for it (news.eternal-september.org:119) in Pan. It seems to be
working as expected now, with no changes to the server config portion,
which makes me think something happened in the earlier "Subscribe" action
that wasn't right. The other groups I'm reading aren't in their
heirarchy either, so I'd expect any problem with server config to affect
all of them equally, but only clc was failing to get new headers.

 

[Paul]

I don't see any checkbox in Pan for always requesting authentication. I
do have an account with e-s, and have the username/password set up in the
config for it (news.eternal-september.org:119) in Pan. It seems to be
working as expected now, with no changes to the server config portion,
which makes me think something happened in the earlier "Subscribe" action
that wasn't right. The other groups I'm reading aren't in their
heirarchy either, so I'd expect any problem with server config to affect
all of them equally, but only clc was failing to get new headers.

I don't know the details of Pan, but USENET news articles have
article numbers. If the article numbers are out of sync, it can
appear to the newsreader, the server has no new articles. There
are various procedures for re-synchronization. Basically,
set the article number thing back to 1 on the client end,
will cause it to think all articles on the server are fit
to download or consider. The client keeps a "high water mark",
so it can know when new articles are present on the server side.
The client also keeps track of which articles have been read,
as a convenience to the user.

Back in the days of command line newsreading, you'd have a single
..newsrc file with the details in it. None of this messy folders
full of files, to keep track of stuff.

Paul

 

[Jorgen Grahn]

I don't know the details of Pan, but USENET news articles have
article numbers. If the article numbers are out of sync, it can
appear to the newsreader, the server has no new articles. There
are various procedures for re-synchronization. Basically,
set the article number thing back to 1 on the client end,
will cause it to think all articles on the server are fit
to download or consider. The client keeps a "high water mark",
so it can know when new articles are present on the server side.
The client also keeps track of which articles have been read,
as a convenience to the user.

Back in the days of command line newsreading, you'd have a single
.newsrc file with the details in it. None of this messy folders
full of files, to keep track of stuff.

Still no real reason not to have such a file -- mine is 200K after
many years of active use. The state information for c.l.c. is a few
screenfulls though; since I don't read everything it has to say "he's
read #1--5, #6--14, #21, ..." rather than "he's read #1--30".

Implementing this could be a rather nice textbook exercise, by the
way. Efficient ways to represent sets of integers, when whole ranges
can be expected to be in the set; (de)serialising such a set as text.

/Jorgen