[Pan-users] Re: Re: odd newsgroup behaviour

[Duncan]

R Kimber posted <address@hidden>, excerpted
below,  on Tue, 28 Jun 2005 16:13:45 +0100:

> The log shows:-
> 
> Tue, 28 Jun 2005 15:59:16 - Saved 565 articles in "uk.politics.misc" in
> 0.0 seconds (121846 art/sec) 
> Tue, 28 Jun 2005 15:59:26 - (Null) -
> article_is_valid: assertion `a->references.len==0 || *a->references.str
> =='<'' failed 
> Tue, 28 Jun 2005 15:59:26 - (Null) - article_is_valid:
> assertion `*a->message_id.str =='<'' failed
> Tue, 28 Jun 2005 15:59:26 -
> (Null) - article_is_valid: assertion `*a->message_id.str =='<'' failed
> 
> etc.
> 
> I'm puzzled by the "saved 565 in 0 seconds" bit, or is this just
> because I've got a quick machine ? ;-)

The X number of posts in 0 seconds thing I'm not sure about either.  I
only know it always seems to be 0 seconds, no matter how many posts, and
how long it may actually take to load or switch groups.  Obviously, the
timer is off, somewhere, possibly because the timing thread is put to
sleep waiting for the disk activity before it has a chance to get a time
sample for the "before" time, and by the time it wakes up when the thing
is loaded, it simply takes two time samples in quick succession with
perhaps a ms elapsed between, which it then reports as zero time.

Anyway, the time is off, but the number of posts appears to be reliable. 
It has been that way "forever", so to speak, nothing new or unusual there.

It would appear the problem in your case is in the references header,
again, likely due to use of an "invalid" character because the poster was
using a strange charset resulting in a weird message-id, which of course
turns up in the references header for the entire subthread.  Even if it's
only a single poster, if he's a regular, and his posts generate a number
of replies, the numbers could add up to hundreds of posts, between
multiple subthreads.

If this is the case, unfortunately, it's likely the best choices might be
switching readers for that group, or downgrading your pan version -- I
don't have any idea how far back you might have to go but the old 0.11.x
gnome-1 version would depend on a different gtk/pango setup so would
probably work.

You /could/ also try changing your local charsets.  That's an entirely
wild shot in the dark that I have /no/ idea whether it'd work or not, but
perhaps try utf-8, ascii, and iso-859-1 (western), as the most common
ones.  It's likely you are running one of those, now.  (Note that ascii
anyway will have issues with the euro symbol, and likely the pound.  I
don't know if that'll screw you or not.)  As for how to change charsets,
again, I'm /totally/ out of my league, there, as all I understand is
US-ASCII here so I have very little i18n/l10n (localization, basically
choosing a specific charset and language from those available due to i18n)
experience at all.

-- 
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