reboot seems to have fixed: thufir at mordor:~$ sudo fetchnews -vvv leafnode 1.11.10: verbosity level is 3, debugmode is 0 try_lock(timeout=5), fqdn="mordor.bounceme.net" erased stale pid 2777 host mordor.bounceme.net lockfile /var/spool/news/ leaf.node/lock.file news.mozilla.org: connecting to port nntp... -Thufir