[leafnode-list] Re: leafnode 1.11.7 unsubscribes low-traffic groups with slrn?

Matthias Andree matthias.andree at gmx.de
Fri Sep 4 10:59:20 CEST 2009


Robert Grimm schrieb:
> Matthias Andree <matthias.andree at tu-dortmund.de> wrote:
>> Greetings,
> 
>> this is a question to the slrn users reading news from leafnode 1.11.7:
> 
>> Have you ever observed leafnode unsubscribing you from low-traffic groups
>> (i. e. stop fetching these groups)?
> 
>> How exactly does slrn check for new news in newsgroups, which NNTP
>> commands does it use (a debug log from either slrn or leafnode might
>> tell)? If slrn can be reconfigured to use different NNTP commands, which
>> others are available?
> 
> The default ist to use GROUP for every subscribed group in slrn, e.g.
> read_active defaults to 0. If read_active is set, slrn only issues LIST
> and NEWGROUPS and GROUP only when entering a group.

Hm. The latter cannot possibly work with leafnode, because it's too unspecific.

We could work around that and pretend LIST refreshes interest in all subscribed
groups, but I'm not sure if that's harmful and prevents unsubscriptions, so I'm
not going to change 1.X for that matter.

I'll rather document for 1.11.8 that slrn should be used with read_active at its
default setting of 0.

> I will be able to do some tests over the weekend and provide some logs.

Thank you.

>> I've recently become aware (through a de.comm.software.newsserver post)
>> that people still started using the noexpire scripts that are part of the
>> Debian package, but I believed the last bug in the "unsubscribe
>> low-traffic groups" was fixed 5½ years ago in the 1.9.52 release.
> 
> Currently I am trying to take over maintainership in Debian. Do you think the
> script should be removed? I have to confess that I never had use for it.

I'm not sure if it should be removed. Perhaps add a warning that users should
rather report a bug (and which logging and debug information to include, for
instance, running lsmac[.pl] - ships with leafnode - on interesting.groups)
*before* installing the script.

If leafnode unsubscribes users prematurely  in a situation where the client
software issues group-specific commands such as GROUP or LISTGROUP, I'd prefer a
bug report over a distro-side workaround.

> I am sorry that I didn't contact you before on this behalf, my plan was to send
> a mail to you after the end of the holidays in Bavaria.

Nevermind. leafnode 1 is in a pretty good shape, both my upstream version and
the Debian package, so no urge required.

Best regards
Matthias



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