Re: [Pan-users] Unable to upload binaries in Pan

[Duncan]

Dick Baker posted on Sat, 08 Nov 2014 16:43:20 -0800 as excerpted:

> When I saw that Pan had finally added binary posting, I tried it again,
> but obviously I'm doing something wrong.  I can select binaries (have
> tried mp3, jpg) and send them, but upon subsequent download I just get a
> batch of 1K or 2K error messages.
> 
> Is there some arcane setting in the post dialogue window that I'm
> missing?
> 
> (You can see my failed attempts in alt.windows.test with subject line
> Buttram*)

Pan version can be helpful for questions like this...  FWIW I'm posting 
with pan (via the gmane list2news archive), so you can see my pan version 
in the headers.

I rarely do binary groups and even more rarely post attachments, but last 
I knew it was working just fine.  The one caveat I know of is that pan 
uses yEnc encoding, which is generally accepted on binary groups as it 
dramatically cuts down on encoding overhead (33% on traditional 
encodings, perhaps 5% on yEnc), but which isn't supported by most mail 
clients and some combined mail/news and news-only clients, as it's not 
backward ascii-only content compatible.  That's also the reason it's 
pretty much not generally supported for mail at all, only on the binary 
newsgroups, which being their own little ecosystem, can get away with it.

If your server is anti-yenc, or anti-attachments in non-binary groups 
(which it may use different backends for), it's conceivable that it 
refuses yEncoded posts as well.  I've not looked at the test-posts to see 
what the error messages say, but particularly on some servers (and you 
don't say what servers you are using), that'd be the most likely error.

One additional thing to note, probably not directly related to these 
errors, but about binary posting via pan in general...

Pan doesn't directly attach binary files.  Instead, it posts them as 
replies to the original post.  While separate binary posting is common in 
binaries groups, it can be a bit irritating if all you're posting is say 
an accompanying screenshot in a tech and normally text group, and you 
intended it to be attached to the original message.  The behavior can 
also be a bit confusing to the poster if they're not familiar with this 
type of binary posting from "true" binary groups.


Anyway, if you don't believe it's a server-policy related yEnc filtering 
issue, post your pan version and preferably the server in question, and 
maybe someone here can confirm.  I could fire up my pan test instance[1] 
and check for myself, but as I said I don't do binaries that often, and 
haven't done them in awhile, so I'd prefer to avoid the hassle if 
possible.

[1] Pan test instance:  I run multiple pan instances, using a wrapper 
script that sets the PAN_HOME environmental variable to point them at 
their appropriate configuration and cache subdirs.  This is my text 
instance, which I normally start and stop with X and KDE so it's running 
most of the time I'm running the computer.  The test and binary instances 
don't get run so often... perhaps a couple times a year for the test 
instance, and it has been long enough for the binary instance that I 
don't even have its dedicated cache partition setup any more as I 
switched to SSDs since I used it, and would have to set it up.

-- 
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