[Pan-users] Re: Pan doesn't dl headers for one group

[Duncan]

Neal Wilkinson posted <address@hidden>,
excerpted below,  on Thu, 12 May 2005 15:17:02 -0400:

> I've subscribed to 4 newsgroups. When I go to get new headers it shows
> downloading (tasks 4). When is finished then 3 are actually updated and
> one is not. If I then unsubscribe to this group and resubscribe it works
> normally. Then when I exit and restart Pan it exhibits the same behavior.
> If I ask it to download "all" headers for that group it will then go get
> the new ones as well. Each time I exit the program though it is broken
> again. The filtering is the default and is the same for the other groups.
> Whats up with this?

The problem is likely this:  For whatever reason, server related or due to
a faulty communication between PAN and the server, or possibly some file
system corruption due to a lockup at the wrong moment, PAN's record of the
xref message group numbers it has seen for that group are somehow wrong,
probably seriously higher than the numbers currently coming from the
server.  This causes PAN to believe that everything the server has is
long-since dead history it knew about (and you read) ages ago.

Note that PAN does /not/ reset all this information with a simply
unsubscribe/resubscribe to the group.

A quick test to see if this is the case would be to create a second server
instance in PAN, but point it at the same physical server as the other
one.  Then close PAN and restart it, going to the new server right away,
before establishing any connections with the old one, and download the
group list, then subscribe to the problem group.  Check messages, quit
PAN, restart it, and see if PAN properly remembers where you were.  If so,
you have your problem.  If not, it's something more complex.

Assuming that's the problem, and you want to resurrect your old server's
version of the group, try going into the group, then right clicking and
unsubscribing, THEN (while it's still listed) right clicking and "Delete
group".  Exit PAN and go to your PAN dir (normally ~/.pan/data/) and
manually delete any stray files still around and recording info about that
group.  Now, restart PAN, redownload the group list (necessary since you
deleted the group including its entry in the group list), and try again
resubscribing and testing.

If that doesn't work but the new server test did, you missed a file
somewhere.  You may have to subscribe to all your old groups in a new
server, and entirely delete the old one.

If the quick-test above didn't eliminate the issue, then as I said, it's a
more complex issue, and will likely require some serious troubleshooting,
starting PAN from the command line with various debug switches and tracing
what's going on.  Hopefully, it won't come to that, however, and the above
fixes the problem.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html