[Pan-users] Re: A multi-server question

[Duncan]

Bruce Bowler <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Thu, 22
Mar 2007 18:43:45 -0400:

> I have access to 2 news servers that carry a somewhat overlapping set of
> news groups.  Server A carries all the groups I want except for 1 and
> does a good job of filtering out most of the spam that appears in those
> groups.  Server B carries all the groups I want, including the 1 that
> Server A doesn't.  Server B does a lousy (maybe even not at all) job of
> removing spam.
> 
> Is it possible to tell pan to ONLY look for this specific group when
> talking to Server B?  As an alternative, is it possible to tell pan
> "when dealing with this group don't talk to Server B (or only look at
> Server A)"?  Obviously, from this users perspective, the 1st option
> would be preferred :-)

Yes and yes, but it's not a GUI option and therefore requires some hand 
editing of the config files (found in ~/.pan2/ by default) that some will 
find a bit too involved to attempt.

The idea is that pan only fetches a new or updated group list when you 
tell it to.  If you don't tell it to, it continues using its old one.  
Therefore, by editing the existing list, you can make pan think about any 
specific server alternately that either a specific group doesn't exist 
(by editing it out), or that /only/ a specific group (or groups) exist 
(by eliminating everything else).

Now, there's a hierarchy of files that pan checks in a particular order, 
and I've not actually looked into it far enough to know that particular 
order, so as they say, "that's left as an exercise for the reader."  
However, here, I'd probably just edit all the associated files as desired 
(with pan closed of course so it doesn't reset what I just edited), tho 
I'd possibly experiment in the process, figuring out which ones 
controlled which others if it was listed in one but not the other.

The individual files are all text based and decently commented with their 
purpose and format, so they can be hand edited safely, as long as you are 
reasonably careful.  You can of course copy off the existing version 
before modifying it, in case you screw up, if you think it's possible you 
might.

-- 
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