You'd still be downloading the duplicates, right? They'd be rejected
by import.
>from different servers. Messages are not "numbered" when yarn imports
>them. The numbers in your .newsrc file is just for UQWK to keep track
>of which messages you've not read yet on its news server, it has
>nothing to do with Yarn.
Is the .newsrc file in the yarn/yarn directory the same as the one in my
shell account home directory? I can just upload this file rather that
doing the renaming online? Or is the .newsrc file on my disc the
*previous* one before getting the latest soup packet?
We're getting close to a solution here - a revised version of oman has
been made available, which calls NNTPSERVER according to what is set
in the shell. It was confirmed that the original version was hard
wired to the local news server (which is now undergoing a complete
upgrade - it was apparently too slow to accept the feed from MCI). I
like this idea of getting news from several servers if it doesn't
cause any problems, and just requires resetting the .newsrc before
each change of server.
>Downloading news from multiple servers is always a good idea when it's
>possible. Unless you've got an outstanding news server, most servers
>miss a fair number of articles, for all sorts of various reasons. The
>more different news feeds you can get the more chance you have of
>seeing every article.
Now for one more request from you or anyone reading this. Does anyone
know of a good reliable news server in the US or Canada (as close as
possible to the MCI node in Vancouver which is our biggest pipe to the
net) that could be used in these circumstances? Read only is OK. Not
necessary for it to allow posting, as I can still post via our local
one and they seem to propogate quite well. It's only the incoming
which is a problem. So I could gather news from any server, and change
back to the local one for posting articles. Our sysadmin is having
trouble finding a good server to test his new version of oman. My only
test was with news.uni-stuttgart.de - it seemed ok at first, but now
it seems very slow to connect - it took him 5 minutes to get in! This
was news.uni-stuttgart.de if anyone's interested.
>I currently gather news from two servers... and the shocking part is
>that yarn's import indicates that there usually isn't a huge number of
>duplicates! Scary.
Well there's a good confirmation that multiple servers is the way to
go. And I'd stick with sending posts through our local one only. What
servers do you use?
>Although it sounds like olmenu or this oman is going to do what you
>want, i'll post a plain text version of the UQWK man page to my web
Thanks for this, but I'd already found it on the net. I liked the
note one your site that it's "Lynx enhanced"! It would be nice not to
have to deal with all the uqwk settings, the new oman front end should
work well now if I can find a good fast news server somewhere. And
then change back to the local one for posting only, not gathering
news. There's a menu configuration and command line option that allows
me to do this.
>Don't be scared to muck around. What could go wrong? (-:
>Just backup your config files first. Make sure you have a seperate
>.newsrc for each server you connect to.
Well I did muck it up ;-(
Trying to gather news with the old oman from the foreign server reset
my .newsrc for that server, as oman was reading from the local one. When
I went back to look at the foreign server with rtin, they were *all*
unread.
Config *files*? The .newsrc file is the only one I have to be
concerned about keeping different versions of, correct? Any other
configuration files that need attention? When I connect with rtin, it
seems to read about 4 files: It connects to the news server first,
then seems to read about 4 files - "reading active news file" "reading
attributes file" and a couple more.
If it's only .newsrc that need to be changed each time, it's not much
of an inconvenience. It's probably easy enough to do this by changing
NNTPSERVER to the foreign one, copying .newsde (the backup for the
foreign server) back to .newsrc, making a soup packet for download,
import into yarn (I do this by shelling out to yarn while online),
change back to the local server, copy .newsrc back to .newsde (for the
foreign server backup) and copy .newsit (backup for the local server) to
.newsrc for uploading replies and posting them. I could probably do
most of this with a script or preset command line sent from my
terminal. I have a straight vanilla shell account here.
>>first used it with our local Bangkok mailing list, I was lightly
>>castigated with "Brian, this is a mailing list, *not* a newsgroup."
>>Maybe he was just nitpicking, or needs a better reader.
>
>If Brian has a problem with it best to ask him and get him to be clear
>about his concerns. You can tell him the experts (ha!) on the Yarn
>list say that it should be no problem <-:
I trust the experts on this list more than "experts" over here. By the
way, *I'm* Brian, the other guy was a Norwegian expat here who writes
a windoze newsreader called Tropical Reader. Maybe it only confused
that one. More likely he was just being picky...
By the way Tim (or is it Tom?) ;-) thanks much for your help and
advice here. Both for me and our sysadmin. Our local news server is
now dead, at least until the weekend when the upgrade should be
finished. But at least we should have the option to configure any news
server we want, for getting soup packets. An absolute necessity here,
where we pay extra charges for anything over 20 hours per month.
Brian Jackson
But at least they're EXPERIENCED incompetents.
--
brianj@mozart.inet.co.th .+'''+.
B a n g k o k -----------===N A G A===---------- T h a i l a n d
`+.,.+'
International Travel Service
170/8 Soi Suan Plu, Sathorn, Bangkok 10120