[Pan-users] Re: Migrate settings from old pan

[Duncan]

Jim Henderson <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Fri, 06 Jun 2008 03:42:02
+0000:

> On Fri, 06 Jun 2008 00:52:15 +0000, Duncan wrote:
> 
>>> On Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:50:06 -0700, Peter Scott wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Is there any automated assistance available?
>>> 
>>> Nope.  New pan and Old pan are completely different.
>> 
>> Well, not /completely/.  Some of the files are the same, some
>> different.
> 
> True, all good points, too - I'd forgotten about the scorefile
> similarities.  I was thinking more the databases.

Yea... scorefile (mostly) the same, but it pays to manually fix it up as 
I said anyway.  Databases absolutely different, but the payoff is 
**MUCH** more efficient memory management from pan.  The config files, 
different altho a few of the settings will look familiar, but they really 
have to be different, because pan's server and newsgroup organization is 
vastly different now.

The cache files...  the same, and it'll save some work/time redownloading 
if you have a big cache, but the part I missed to say is that because the 
database is different, you have to redownload overviews in ordered to 
actually /see/ what's cached.  Still, not having to actually redownload 
the messages themselves is nice.

Something else I didn't say... while there are some new features, 
definitely better for those who do multiserver (due to automated 
handling) and/or binaries (due to the vastly better memory handling), and/
or text if you want to archive the posts in-group "forever" because they 
no longer expire locally when the server expires them, there are a few 
missing features, and a few features that just work differently.

One of the biggest missing features for which there is as yet no 
replacement (other than running a local server such as leafnode, 
programming it to automate it, and having pan connect to it) is the rules 
that allowed such (optional) things as auto-delete of killed messages, 
auto-mark-read of negative-scored messages, and auto-download of watched 
(and if desired other score zones, high, medium, etc) messages.

The other often requested feature is a way to categorize groups, made 
possible by setting up different servers in old-pan, before pan automated 
server handling.  I did explain the work-around for that, running 
separate pan instances using the PAN_HOME environmental variable to point 
to the appropriate config for that instance.

-- 
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