🚀 go-pugleaf

Alex Kiernan <alexk@demon.net> wrote:

> simon@twoplaces.co.uk (Simon Turner) writes:
> 
> > On Sunday, in article <nospam-1509022333330001@192.168.0.1>
> >      nospam@kenner.demon.co.uk "No Spam Today" wrote:
> > 
> > > In article <B9AA96DE966813E78F@10.0.0.1>, Dave@zizek.demon.co.uk
> > > (Dave Wilson)
> > >  wrote:
> > 
> > > > I do use MT NewsWatcher for some online reading. On Saturday
> > > > (and I think Friday evening) I had a spate of reported
> > > > disconnects followed by reading as normal.  There was a blight
> > > > of them when opening a (large and busy) new newsgroup (is that
> > > > how you'd term it) from my subscribed list ie after the number
> > > > of articles had been obtained - MT would start to get the
> > > > headers and then report a disconnection.
> > > 
> > > this is very similar to the behaviour I am seeing. It is ongoing
> > > and disabling.
> > > 
> > > The results of XPAT searches in these busy groups are also full of
> > > garbage - i.e.  many more articles are reported as matching the
> > > subject line than actually should match.
> > > 
> > > something seems to have been corrupted on the news server.
> > 
> > I wonder if it might be unexpected characters, massively over-long
> > lines or similar in the server output?  Can anyone provide a
> > newsgroup name with NNTP commands etc. which cause these apparent
> > disconnections?  (Or indeed the group and XPAT command mentioned
> > above which produces apparently bogus output?)
> > 
> 
> One of the things I noticed in the group mentioned somewhere in this
> thread (uk.business.agriculture I think, but I can't seem to find the
> reference now) was that there were some non US ASCII characters
> embedded in the headers (and hence the overview) and some *very* long
> References headers.

That was me. Different thread, 14 Sept, right newsgroup. I haven't got
the NNTP commands, but c. 1712 on that day news.demon.co.uk flatly
refused to download articles or headers from that group to MacSoup on
three successive attempts. On each occasion headers and articles from
four other groups arrived without delay but the process stalled at
uk.business.agriculture. About 10-15 seconds MacSoup timed out,
reporting it had either 'lost connection to the server, or the server
was misbehaving' and refused to download any subsequent groups. It's
worth noting that I have rarely if ever seen that message from MacSoup
in >5 years downloading news. 

Setting uk.business.agriculture to 'inactive' allowed MacSoup to skip
uk.business.agriculture and download the remaining groups as usual, no
delays whatsoever. 

If memory serves I trundled over to oldnews.demon.co.uk and downloaded
everything again, this time including uk.business.agriculture without
difficulty. And I've been using oldnews since. I'll try using news to
post this now.

regards
sarah




-- 
They say that where the pavement ends there country life begins
The pavement keeps on spreading and the grass is growing thin
All my childhood memories gone the way of history
My heart's where my home used to be.  Little Johnny England.