Re: [Pan-users] It seems we migh t have reached some sort of milestone…

[Phillip Pi]

Tin also has problems with this newsgroup. Urs and I are looking at this 
issue. I hope Pan group fixes it too!


On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 10:45:08PM +0000, SciFi wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> FYI, I just added the following to “Bug 549655 – Support 64 bit
> article numbers”:
> 
> We should note on this bug:
> 
> Apparently sometime late on Tuesday 21 April 2009 CDT (UTC -0500),
> some people using Xnews began suddenly logging strange errors
> showing “bits index out of range” and asking for help in the
> ‘news.software.readers’ group.
> 
> Turns out they were trying to access ‘alt.binaries.boneless’ which
> of course is the largest group by far.  And they were using
> GigaNews.
> 
> Yep, you guessed it:  GN and other servers have finally went over
> the 31–bit limit for article numbers.  ;)  [RFC-3977 sets this
> limit, while older related RFCs had no published limit AFAIK,
> go figure…]
> 
> The discussion starts here with tpka ‘pianotech’ getting the
> error:  <news:address@hidden>
> 
> Later in that thread, on Thursday 23 April, tpka ‘Guy’ was
> watching his newsrc counter for boneless.  By 3:50pm CDT, it
> tripped over the limit (not sure what server he was using at the
> time).
> 
> Later that same date (night-time 23 April CDT), an Astraweb user
> posted a confirmation there.
> 
> Then the discussion touched on how some UseNet–providers are
> simply effective clones of the major ones.  Which means this
> problem has already begun spreading all over creation.  ;)
> 
> Most people are aware of boneless and do not try to load/sync
> headers; instead, keen usenetters will resort to NZB indexing
> sites, or FTD or such, to try locating what–not, which all operate
> on the “Message-ID” gizmo.
> 
> But one does not need to actually load any headers from boneless
> to experience this problem:  As soon as you open boneless in your
> news–reader, the NNTP dialog will try reading the “high–water
> mark” for the group, which is over the 31–bit limit.  *Boom* right
> there your software might experience an error if it hasn’t been
> patched yet.
> 
> There probably are several areas in the code for any news–reader
> that need patching, as you can see in the attachment for this very
> bug for pan2.  The “open group” code is just one place.
> 
> So this to me seems to be an historical moment.  :)
> 
> And it is a bit uncanny that GN did predict it occurring within a
> rough time-frame (re: article published at the URL mentioned at
> the top of this bug–report[1]).
> 
> It seems the next–biggest group is ‘alt.binaries.nl’ which has
> lots of room, but who really knows what will happen in the future…
> 
> 
> [1] http://www.giganews.com/news/article/64-bit-Usenet.html
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