🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 11 Nov 95 08:12:14 GMT, in <816077534snz@keris.demon.co.uk>
          Chris Croughton <chris@keris.demon.co.uk> wrote.....

> If you (or anyone else) can come up with a good algorithm to decide when
> "everything's finished", I'd like to hear it - my machine runs
> unattended most of the time, and those extra 2 minutes at the end of the
> session add up...
> 

I'm not sure if this is theoretically possible. The whole process is event
driven. The Demon server polls all attached mail servers periodically when
it has mail to deliver.

Likewise, news is also a polling process in both directions.

Unlike something like CIX, or CI$ where it is easy to know when all mail
and news has been picked up.

I've written OLR's for all three in the past and CIX is the simplest and
fastest to process with.

--
 Mike H. (Software Sans Frontieres)  PGP:818C97EB75366540  8A27D2AB8E7482CB

  Umail 1.50 ftp.demon.co.uk:/pub/ibmpc/umail,/pub/ibmpc/windows/umail 
       Umail List Server - umailist@avon.demon.co.uk, Subject: Help

In article <11121995101405umw@avon.demon.co.uk>, "Mike H."
<mike@avon.demon.co.uk> writes

>The whole process is event
>driven. The Demon server polls all attached mail servers periodically when
>it has mail to deliver.

The Demon mail machines run clients which are woken up periodically if
there is mail to be delivered to your server.

>Likewise, news is also a polling process in both directions.

News can be polled by a client on your machine. You can deliver news via
email or by using NNTP commands. There is no polling in the other
direction.

-- 
richard                      Richard Clayton         T U R N P I K E  Ltd
                                                     tel: +44 1306 747747
"Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind" quoted in ZAMM

I used Windis for a while and generally liked the auto-logout but it
suffered from a couple of issues. The timer runs from when Windis starts
and not from when a connection was made. In the dark days of early
summer, it could take 10 minutes to get a connection and Windis
frequently timed out. Secondly it had problems working out when all
activity had stopped. I'd really like to have a similar function in
Turnpike but I believe Richard is not comfortable with being able to put
enough failsafes in. So how about:-

1. Start a timer when SLIP/PPP is enabled. This is point zero.
2. Run two threads that watch News and Mail.

For News
1. Wait a user definable time for news collection to start, else clear
the flag.
2. Clear the flag when news collection is complete.

For Mail 
1. Wait a user definable time for Mail collection to start.
2. Clear the flag when there are no mail connections active.

When both flags are cleared, drop the connection.

Safeguards
1. Unconditional disconnection after a user-definable time from point
zero.
2. Unconditional disconnection after a user-definable period of
inactivity.
3. Seperate inactivity timers for news and mail. If these timeout, clear
the respective flag.

Is this enough?

=======================================================================
|  /\  | <Julian Bond> julian@shockwav.demon.co.uk | Ducati 900SS '93 |
| /<>\ | uses Disclaim                PGPKey @ MIT | MZ ETZ250    '80 |
|/____\|        So many words, so little time      | DoD# 65535       |
=======================================================================

Chris Croughton <chris@keris.demon.co.uk> writes:
> If you (or anyone else) can come up with a good algorithm to decide when
> "everything's finished", I'd like to hear it - my machine runs
> unattended most of the time, and those extra 2 minutes at the end of the
> session add up...

I just run everything serially

send mail
send news
get news

and drop the connection right away..  usually the incoming mail is finished
at that point, but if it isn't then it will arrive the next day in due course.

--
]ain

In article <816077534snz@keris.demon.co.uk>
           chris@keris.demon.co.uk "Chris Croughton" writes:
> 
> If you (or anyone else) can come up with a good algorithm to decide when
> "everything's finished", I'd like to hear it - my machine runs
> unattended most of the time, and those extra 2 minutes at the end of the
> session add up...
> 
I have noticed from running NNTP that it fetches the headers for news 
first. There are two figure quoted in the messages that relate to downloading 
news and the headers give the total number of articles to be expected. If mail 
is going to be transferred in parallel and the news is still going after mail 
has been dealt with then this would be one way. When (xxx/yyy) is presented 
with the two numbers xxx and yyy equal in value then it is time to apply just a 
short pause before logging off. It will mean that mail not completed transfer 
will have to wait till next time.

Of course a chat to demon might get them to put an indication of mail items to 
be received with each mail item carrying this field. If new mail is arriving 
during the download it could update the total when it adds the newly arriving 
message to the queue. This would then be a zero terminated process. A similar 
thing could be done for up-loads.

-- 
Paul E. Bennett
(peb@transcontech.co.uk)
Going Forth Safely

In article <816292257snz@tcontec.demon.co.uk>
           peb@transcontech.co.uk "Paul E. Bennett" writes:

>I have noticed from running NNTP that it fetches the headers for news
>first. There are two figure quoted in the messages that relate to downloading
>news and the headers give the total number of articles to be expected. If mail
>is going to be transferred in parallel and the news is still going after mail
>has been dealt with then this would be one way. When (xxx/yyy) is presented
>with the two numbers xxx and yyy equal in value then it is time to apply just a >short pause before logging off. It will mean that mail not completed transfer
>will have to wait till next time.

That's not problem (or at least a SMOP). KA9Q (and any news client)
knows when news has finished.  For that matter, it knows when outgoing
mail has finished as well.  The problem is not knowing how much mail
should be coming in (and I might not have any outgoing mail, so I don't
want to drop the line immediately).

>Of course a chat to demon might get them to put an indication of mail items to
>be received with each mail item carrying this field. If new mail is arriving
>during the download it could update the total when it adds the newly arriving
>message to the queue. This would then be a zero terminated process. A similar
>thing could be done for up-loads.

I don't think there's anything in the protocol to allow the extra
information to come in without breaking all systems that don't expect
it.

POP3 can do it, because it's user-end driven, but that's only for a
single mailbox...

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*  chris@keris.demon.co.uk      *                                     *
*  chriscr@cix.compulink.co.uk  *  FIAWOL (Filking Is A Way Of Life)  *
*  100014.3217@compuserve.com   *                                     *
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