[Pan-users] Result of Astraweb Trouble-Ticket

[Mark S Bilk]

Astraweb help-desk totally blew me off.  And they didn't bother
to read my message carefully, nor answer my questions.  The 
sequence of four messages follows:

*** 1 to astraweb -- original trouble-ticket *************************

Hi,

I posted five test articles to alt.test via Astraweb yesterday.  
The newsreader Pan, version 0.135 (the latest), can see the 
headers of all five, but can download the bodies of only the 
first two.  The headers of the three problematic articles show 
bogus line counts of 800+ in Pan.  Another person using Pan 
has the same problem with those articles; they are also using 
Astraweb.  We can both read all five articles from Astraweb 
using other newsreaders than Pan.  I and several others can 
read them all from other news servers using Pan.

I think there may be some subtle incompatibility between Pan 
and Astraweb in the way they implement the NNTP protocol, that 
occasionally corrupts article headers and makes the article 
bodies unretrievable.  

Before I attack this problem with a network packet analyzer, 
I'd like to know if you folks have heard of it before and if 
any progress has been made toward solving it.

The five articles referred to are all included below.  Some were
retrieved by KNode from Astraweb, and some by Pan from Blocknews.
I posted them all via Astraweb.  BTW, I've been an Astraweb customer 
for a year (for binaries) and am very happy with your service!

  Thanks,
  
  Mark S Bilk
  address@hidden

[I included all 5 articles with all headers here.]
  
*** 2 from astraweb **************************************************

Hi Mark,

Could you please try using other newsreaders first and see 
if you are able to retrieve the articles? Thank you.

Your E-mail is much appreciated.

Best Regards,

Daniel

Ticket Details

===================

Ticket ID: BAZ-407744

Status: Closed

*** 3 to astraweb ****************************************************

On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 06:52:25PM -0700, Astraweb Helpdesk wrote:
>Hi Mark,
>
>Could you please try using other newsreaders first and see 
>if you are able to retrieve the articles? Thank you.

Hi,

The text of my ticket includes the sentence:

"We can both read all five articles from Astraweb 
using other newsreaders than Pan."

Do you still have access to that text?  If not, I have 
appended it to the end of this message.

Have you had reports of this problem before?

Has anyone researched the cause of the problem?  I would 
like to know before I devote a lot of my time to it.

Astraweb works with many other newsreaders, and Pan works 
with many other Usenet providers.  I think that neither 
is at fault, but that some small difference in interpretation
of the NNTP protocols occasionally is causing this problem.

  Mark

>Your E-mail is much appreciated.
>
>Best Regards,
>
>Daniel
>
>Ticket Details
>
>===================
>
>Ticket ID: BAZ-407744
>
>Status: Closed

[I included the text of my original message here, since they 
obviously hadn't read much of it.]

*** 4 from astraweb **************************************************

Hi Mark,

If other newsreaders work fine, We would suggest you to contact 
the author of Pan newsreader for more information. Thank you.

Your E-mail is much appreciated.

Best Regards,

Daniel

Ticket Details

===================

Ticket ID: BAZ-407744

Status: Closed

**********************************************************************