[leafnode-list] fetchnews: "invalid name (NULL component)" messages.

[Stroller]

Some time ago I had an unrelated problem with leafnode & mentioned in  
passing that I have this persistent issue:

$ sudo fetchnews -vvv
fetchnews mode: get articles, get headers, get bodies, post articles
found 0 articles in in.coming.
news.eclipse.co.uk: connecting to port nntp
   trying:    address 216.196.109.145 port 119...
   connected: address 216.196.109.145 port 119.
news.eclipse.co.uk: connected (200), banner: "200 news.eclipse.net.uk"
news.eclipse.co.uk: getting newsgroups list
Warning: skipping group "alt.", invalid name (NULL component).
Warning: skipping group "alt.binaries.", invalid name (NULL component).
Warning: skipping group "alt.binaries.celebrities.bikini.", invalid  
name (NULL component).
Warning: skipping group "alt.binaries.multimedia.erotica.", invalid  
name (NULL component).
Warning: skipping group "alt.binaries.pictures.", invalid name (NULL  
component).Warning: skipping group "alt.binaries.sounds..mp3.zappa",  
invalid name (NULL component).
Warning: skipping group "alt.chello.binaries.", invalid name (NULL  
component).
Warning: skipping group  
"alt.movies.one.flew.over.the.cuckoos.nest.famous.lines.mr.turkle.oh.shi 
t.the...", invalid name (NULL component).
...

Some of Matthias' previous comments were:

On 6 Jul 2006, at 22:11, Matthias Andree wrote:
> Stroller <linux.luser at myrealbox.com> writes:
> ...
>> I've been getting the "Warning: skipping group "alt.", invalid name
>> (NULL component)"
>
> It looks like a badly maintained upstream news server at any rate.  A
> group name does not end in a dot, and they aren't supposed to list  
> group
> names that are prefixes of other groups names (i. e. when there are
> subgroups), for instance:
>
> BAD:     alt       and  alt.something   (alt is a prefix of  
> alt.something)
>
> GOOD:    alt.misc  and  alt.something
>
>> and "ERROR: FETCHNEWS MUST REFETCH THE WHOLE ACTIVE FILE NEXT RUN."
>> messages for some time, both on this machine & it's predecessor and I
>> always figured it was something to do with my ISP's server. Is this
>> anything to worry about?
>
> This is not overly serious, unless you're paying per time or volume,
> since refetching the active file takes several hundred kB and can thus
> take a few minutes over modems or ISDN.  WRT the refetching the whole
> active file, I'm not sure. If it persists with the new version AND  
> if it
> is not fixed by running "fetchnews -f"), then we'll need to debug
> this. The NULL component shouldn't be causing this though.
>
> But we should still find out if it's a configuration issue or just a
> consequence of the bug above.

I have since upgraded to 20061010a (I see 20061204a is available, so  
will grab that later) and the problem is still persisting.

Strangely I noticed yesterday - I'm afraid that I don't use Usenet  
for weeks at a time, so don't know when exactly this resolution  
occurred - that the "invalid name (NULL component)" messages had gone  
away, but when I tried to subscribe to uk.media.dvd (a long- 
established & active group) my news client complained that it wasn't  
found on the server. Running `fetchnews -f -vvv` resolved this, but  
the error messages came back!! See the attached console output.

Can anyone suggest how to resolve this, please? Or advise me the best  
way to debug?
Running `fetchnews -f` again doesn't seem to make any difference.

If I telnet to the upstream server what commands should I issue to  
see a full list of groups? I get this with more than one upstream  
server, so I actually think it's unlikely that the groups are being  
listed incorrectly by both of them & would like to prove this.

TIA for any comments,

Stroller.

-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: fetchnews.txt
URL: <http://krusty.dt.e-technik.tu-dortmund.de/pipermail/leafnode-list/attachments/20061211/515251d3/attachment.txt>