[leafnode-list] inaccurate response to GROUP command

Matthias Andree matthias.andree at gmx.de
Wed Jul 21 15:09:33 CEST 2004


Brian Sammon schrieb am 2004-07-20:

> I'm running leafnode 1.10.1 on Debian Sarge on PowerPC.
> touch_newsgroups is bailing out because on one of the newsgroups, it
> can't get the article that it thinks is the last message in the group.

Is that the touch_newsgroups by Jim Nicholson, found at
http://www.minusen.force9.co.uk/utilities/?

If it is, you are lucky, the script is no longer necessary: since
v1.9.52, a simple "GROUP" command will refresh the subscription of a
subscribed group (but will not subscribe to an unsubscribed group until
after the pseudo article has been read).

> I've explored this by telnetting to my NNTP port and here's what I see:
>   group comp.emulators.freemware
>   211 4 3 6 comp.emulators.freemware group selected
> 
> However, judging from /var/spool/news/comp/emulators/misc/ there is only one 
> message in the group, message #3
> /var/spool/news/comp/emulators/misc/.overview only contains info on this one 
> message.
> On the other hand, /var/spool/news/leaf.node/groupinfo contains:
>   comp.emulators.freemware 6 3 1084501180 Open source PC Virtualisation softwar
> 
> Is that the source of my problem?

leafnode will _NEVER_ decrement the "high watermark" even if some of the
articles with higher numbers have expired.

Reasons: newsreaders look at the article number which is monotonically
increasing, if it corrected the figures to 211 1 3 3, the newsreader
might either not present the next 3 articles to arrive (they would be
assigned 4 to 6 again which the newsreader considers read since they
have been there) or would re-fetch the whole group.

> Am I correct to expect an accurate response to the GROUP command?

Unfortunately not. The GROUP command is used to query how much space the
newsreader may allocate, but there is no guarantee that all articles in
the given range are present, and there is no obligation to make sure the
"borders" of the range exist.

-- 
atthias Andree

Encrypted mail welcome: my GnuPG key ID is 0x052E7D95 (PGP/MIME preferred)



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