[Pan-users] Re: Can post, but cannot reply

[Duncan]

Karl Lindholm <address@hidden>
posted address@hidden, excerpted below, on 
Sun, 26 Oct 2008 06:16:08 -0700:

> <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" ><tr><td valign="top"
> style="font: inherit;">I have Pan setup to receive the Airline Pilots
> Assn. newsfeed.&nbsp; I can read and post, bit cannot reply to an
> existing message on the board.&nbsp; When I try to do so, the little
> "posting" window pops up and just grinds away, never actually sending
> the message.&nbsp; I also get an "Unknown Error" message in the event
> log when I try.&nbsp; Any help would be
> appreciated.<br></td></tr></table><br>

Please can the HTML.  There's a reason (security, respect for those who 
have plain text clients) pan doesn't do HTML.  Please respect that on the 
pan list, even if you choose not to do it in your regular mail 
communications.  (Of course many people don't know what they are 
sending... If that was you, now you do.)

The problem sounds like something server-side.  Note that you can run pan 
from a terminal window and get some additional output.  There's also an 
undocumented --debug switch you can feed it, to get even more.  Try that 
and see if it spits out anything useful.  Of course you can also try 
logging the network activity (most firewalls have a log mode) if desired, 
to see what's actually happening on the wire, or strace or gdb pan, altho 
it's not likely the latter two would be a lot of help in this case.

But it is certainly weird that you can post but not reply.  I'm assuming 
there are other replies, so you know the server actually takes replies...

One other thing you can try...  Pan of course sets the references header 
for replies.  That's how threading is supposed to be done (not simply by 
subject, regardless of the references header, as some clients do it), as 
the references header should contain the message-id of the parent and 
further upline.  For testing purposes at least, you could try saving the 
message as draft (pan lets you tell it where), then editing the raw file 
using a standard text editor, to remove the references header.  In theory 
that's the only real difference between an original post and a reply, so 
without that header, it should post as an original post.  You can then 
reopen the draft in pan and send it.  If it posts, then you have 
confirmation it's the references header.

Similarly you can check the headers (IIRC by default, the "h" key toggles 
full header display) of existing messages and verify that they have a 
references header.  Again, if they don't, that could well be the problem, 
probably due to the way the server is configured, as I said.

This assumes a reasonably modern pan, 0.133 being the latest, not the old 
0.14.x series, pre-rewrite.  If you're still using a 0.14.x version and 
can't or don't want to upgrade for some reason, please mention that fact 
in every message so nobody gets mixed up, as it works somewhat 
differently.  No further work is being done on the old version, but we do 
try to help with it still, if possible.  If you /are/ using the old 
series, it could be a problem with the local pan.send-later and/or 
pan.sent directories/folders, which the newer version doesn't have (tho 
in that case it'd likely be all outgoing posts, not just replies).

-- 
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