Lockups while 'sorting'
Mike
I recently upgraded 4.33 to 4.44. I'm on news.cis.dfn.de and use pop3 for my
mail. Things seem to be running fine but I've started getting lockups
when trying to access NGs like alt.conspiracy, alt.cdrom and so on.
This happens at the 'sorting' stage. My netmeter just flattens out with
no visible action, but getting mail using Sylpheed is very slow during
these events, suggesting something is using bandwidth.
I'm betting this is something quite obvious that I've missed somewhere.
Anyone had this problem? Got any suggestions?
Thanks
Mike
--
mikeo...@blueyonder.co.uk
http://www.mikeswebsite.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
Disability is an external influence!
Mark Crispin
> Pine is a horrible newsreader.
Bullshit.
Pine is only "horrible" with broken NNTP servers that do not comply with
the NNTP specification and lie about what messages exist and what do not.
In particular, Pine expects the LISTGROUP command to give information that
in some way matches reality.
Pine works quite delightfully with compliant NNTP servers which give
real results from the LISTGROUP command.
Now, if you wish to use a client that pretends that messages marked in
.newsrc simply do not exist and thus should be impossible to access,
that's your choice. Some of us prefer to go back in a newsgroup and look
at "old" messages.
-- Mark --
http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
LinuxBear
I have used both pine and slrn extensively and I think that slrn is far
superior to pine for reading news. It works MUC faster, is MUCH more
customizable, and you CAN see old newsgroups.
It is well known that pine takes ages with newsgoup, and doesn't have real
sorting of threading or killfiling, but approximations of these.
All that being said, Pine is a great mail client!
Tzafrir Cohen
> Newbie
>
> I recently upgraded 4.33 to 4.44. I'm on news.cis.dfn.de and use pop3 for my
> mail. Things seem to be running fine but I've started getting lockups
> when trying to access NGs like alt.conspiracy, alt.cdrom and so on.
> This happens at the 'sorting' stage.
A number of days ago this local copy of pine consistently crashed ("signal
11") when I tried to sort this newsgroup (comp.mail.pine). Not happening
anymore...
Client: pine 4.44_heb2.09 on solaris 8. Server: INN 2.3.2
--
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:tza...@technion.ac.il
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir
Tim Kynerd
<Pine.LNX.4.50.020716...@shiva1.cac.washington.edu>, Mark
Crispin wrote:
> On Wed, 17 Jul 2002, Keith wrote:
>> Pine is a horrible newsreader.
>
> Bullshit.
>
> Pine is only "horrible" with broken NNTP servers that do not comply with
> the NNTP specification and lie about what messages exist and what do not.
> In particular, Pine expects the LISTGROUP command to give information that
> in some way matches reality.
>
> Pine works quite delightfully with compliant NNTP servers which give
> real results from the LISTGROUP command.
>
> Now, if you wish to use a client that pretends that messages marked in
> .newsrc simply do not exist and thus should be impossible to access,
> that's your choice. Some of us prefer to go back in a newsgroup and look
> at "old" messages.
I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to agree with Keith on this one. I like and
use Pine for E-mail, but I use slrn for news because I greatly prefer the
ASCII art that slrn uses to depict threads over the jumble of Subject:
headers I see in Pine.
PS It's not hard to access "deleted" messages in slrn.
--
Tim Kynerd Sundbyberg (småstan i storstan), Sweden t...@tram.nu
Sunrise in Stockholm today: 4:05
Sunset in Stockholm today: 21:41
My rail transit photos at http://www.kynerd.nu
Mike
As suggested, I have tried TIN but couldn't get on with it's 'logics'.
I'm used to Agent and had some digging to do to find something to
replace it now I've upgraded to Linux. PAN looked nice, but seems to be
still in beta and I can't figure out how to get it to compile/install
at the moment. Sylpheed, the default email/news client with
VectorLinux, is lovely, simple and quick, but I can't figure out how to
(or even if it can be done) get it to log in to my newsserver. Pine was
the answer for me. I like CL progs over GUI as I get fed up with
pecking at pretty little icons and the consistant operating methods of
Pine make it extremely useable IMO.
Like anything under Linux, there is lots to learn, but I've learned
more about Pine in the last 48 hours than anything else under Linux or
M$, due to the excellent info/help resources available. I think I'd
rather stick with Pine as I think the whole project is a winner and the
program itself suits my needs just fine.
As a matter of interest, I think I'd managed to mess up before when I
got fed up of looking at the SORTING thingie. I just closed the xterm.
When I logged off for the night, I found various bits of dumped prog
still running behind the GUI! Granted, this is not desirable, but lets
face it, M$ softwear would have crashed to death and maybe even messed
up the HDD at far less.
I'm wondering if my problem may be down to running in xterm under the
GUI? If the lockups happen again, I'll try the same moves from a
terminal instead and see what happens.
Oh, if only someone could produce a CL browser that rendered graphics!
I'd never need a GUI again!
Tim Kynerd
> On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, Mark Crispin wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 17 Jul 2002, Keith wrote:
>> > Pine is a horrible newsreader.
>>
>> Bullshit.
>>
>> Pine is only "horrible" with broken NNTP servers that do not comply with
>> the NNTP specification and lie about what messages exist and what do not.
>> In particular, Pine expects the LISTGROUP command to give information that
>> in some way matches reality.
>>
>> Pine works quite delightfully with compliant NNTP servers which give
>> real results from the LISTGROUP command.
>>
>> Now, if you wish to use a client that pretends that messages marked in
>> .newsrc simply do not exist and thus should be impossible to access,
>> that's your choice. Some of us prefer to go back in a newsgroup and look
>> at "old" messages.
>>
>> -- Mark --
>>
>> http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
>> Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
>>
>>
>
> As suggested, I have tried TIN but couldn't get on with it's 'logics'.
> I'm used to Agent and had some digging to do to find something to
> replace it now I've upgraded to Linux. PAN looked nice, but seems to be
> still in beta and I can't figure out how to get it to compile/install
> at the moment.
I agree. I jumped through many, many hoops to get Pan 0.11 (I think it was)
to compile, and I downloaded 0.12 (I think it was) and couldn't get it to
compile, and I didn't have the energy to jump through those hoops again.
Also, 0.11 (1) tends to segfault and core dump, and (2) ...won't show me
messages I've accidentally deleted! (Didn't we mention this topic here
recently? ;-) )
> Sylpheed, the default email/news client with VectorLinux, is lovely,
> simple and quick, but I can't figure out how to (or even if it can be
> done) get it to log in to my newsserver. Pine was the answer for me. I
> like CL progs over GUI as I get fed up with pecking at pretty little icons
> and the consistant operating methods of Pine make it extremely useable
> IMO.
>
> Like anything under Linux, there is lots to learn, but I've learned
> more about Pine in the last 48 hours than anything else under Linux or
> M$, due to the excellent info/help resources available. I think I'd
> rather stick with Pine as I think the whole project is a winner and the
> program itself suits my needs just fine.
>
> As a matter of interest, I think I'd managed to mess up before when I
> got fed up of looking at the SORTING thingie. I just closed the xterm.
> When I logged off for the night, I found various bits of dumped prog
> still running behind the GUI! Granted, this is not desirable, but lets
> face it, M$ softwear would have crashed to death and maybe even messed
> up the HDD at far less.
>
> I'm wondering if my problem may be down to running in xterm under the
> GUI? If the lockups happen again, I'll try the same moves from a
> terminal instead and see what happens.
>
> Oh, if only someone could produce a CL browser that rendered graphics!
> I'd never need a GUI again!
Slrn, which I use, has good facilities for decoding binary news articles, if
that's what you mean, and it also uses effective ASCII art to depict article
threads, if *that's* what you mean.
--
Tim Kynerd Sundbyberg (småstan i storstan), Sweden t...@tram.nu
Sunrise in Stockholm today: 4:07
Sunset in Stockholm today: 21:40
Mike
> > Oh, if only someone could produce a CL browser that rendered graphics!
> > I'd never need a GUI again!
>
> Slrn, which I use, has good facilities for decoding binary news articles, if
> that's what you mean, and it also uses effective ASCII art to depict article
> threads, if *that's* what you mean.
Nope! What I was refering to was a fully operational www browser, maybe
something like Lynx, but able to render things like graphics, tables
etc, functioning along similar lines to regular GUI browsers.
It crossed my mind that if ID and other games companies could produce
DOS games that had their own graphics drivers, why not a CL browser
with it's own graphics rendering apps? WWW browsing is about the only
thing that really needs graphics really, and this fantasy browser could
also be recruted by other apps as a support app when graphic rendering
is called for. Or maybe the Pine development team could look into this
idea and expand Pine into an internet super CL app along the lines of
the old SMART DOS based office suite of the early 80s?
Just dreaming and hoping!
Mike
P.S. Thanks for the suggestions.
Tzafrir Cohen
> On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, Tim Kynerd wrote:
>
> > > Oh, if only someone could produce a CL browser that rendered graphics!
> > > I'd never need a GUI again!
> >
> > Slrn, which I use, has good facilities for decoding binary news articles, if
> > that's what you mean, and it also uses effective ASCII art to depict article
> > threads, if *that's* what you mean.
>
> Nope! What I was refering to was a fully operational www browser, maybe
> something like Lynx, but able to render things like graphics, tables
> etc, functioning along similar lines to regular GUI browsers.
>
> It crossed my mind that if ID and other games companies could produce
> DOS games that had their own graphics drivers, why not a CL browser
> with it's own graphics rendering apps? WWW browsing is about the only
> thing that really needs graphics really, and this fantasy browser could
> also be recruted by other apps as a support app when graphic rendering
> is called for. Or maybe the Pine development team could look into this
> idea and expand Pine into aninternet super CL app along the lines of
> the old SMART DOS based office suite of the early 80s?
I don't know when skipstone will be ported to gtk2. But when this will
happen, then I presume that you can run it using gtk/framebuffer. Note
that it will run in the linux console, and not in a general terminal. Also
note that I never tried running anything using gtk/framebuffer.
Also note that you will gain nothing: On X you have an environment that
allows you to work with multiple windows concurrently. On the console you
can't easily do that (let alone tricks of screen and alike. Anything you
can do with screen you can do better on X with, say, ion).
So there is really no point in creating the graphical infrastructure all
over again. The console is just one terminal (well, more. But I have to
login seperately, and the number is limited). On X I can easily switch
between many. And I can run small applets alongside.
Sorry for such an off-topic post
Mike
Something or other.....
Its happing again!
I'm still getting lockups. Same NGs too, so it may be something to do
with the NGs themselves, however...
Whats really ****ing things up at my end is that Pine locks solid. No
keyboard input, zip, diddly squat! I can't even cancel and end up
rebooting the PC to get rid of the problem.
Is this a bug? If so its a major one IMO. Or is there a
config/trick/workround to regaining control when NGs/whatever trip up
the proccedings? As long as this keeps happening and I can't back out of
these sandtraps, I'm stuck with Sylpheed, or may even end up trying
another CL prog (if I can find a tgz to download that is!)
HELP!
Eduardo Chappa
>Whats really ****ing things up at my end is that Pine locks solid. No
>keyboard input, zip, diddly squat! I can't even cancel and end up
>rebooting the PC to get rid of the problem.
What I can't really understand is why you keep insisting in using Pine
when it's screaming in front of you that it's unusable in your situation,
regardless of whose fault it may be (either Pine/the server/connection
speed/etc)
It has been known for quite some time that Pine takes long (really long)
time to open newsgroups with certain servers, and as far as I know these
problems have never been solved, so my advice is to do what Pine is been
telling you all along: use another news reader.
Mark Crispin
> I'm still getting lockups. Same NGs too, so it may be something to do
> with the NGs themselves, however...
>
> Whats really ****ing things up at my end is that Pine locks solid. No
> keyboard input, zip, diddly squat! I can't even cancel and end up
> rebooting the PC to get rid of the problem.
Do you know what is going on in the PC? When you say that "Pine locks
solid" you mean that you can't even kill it via the Task Manager (from
CTRL-ALT-DELETE)?
Is there disk activity? If so, could the NNTP server be doing something
ridiculous like claim that there are millions of messages in the
newsgroup, and the "lock up" is really Windows trying to create swap space
for so many messages?
Eduardo Chappa
>Is there disk activity? If so, could the NNTP server be doing something
>ridiculous like claim that there are millions of messages in the
>newsgroup, and the "lock up" is really Windows trying to create swap
>space for so many messages?
Why is Pine downloading millions of messages? (sic). Why not be more
realistic and let the user say how many messages s/he wants to download
and set the default to be a high number. I see no reason why Pine needs to
download the information on all of them when the last few of them are what
the user really need.
Tzafrir Cohen
> On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, Mike wrote:
>
> Something or other.....
>
> Its happing again!
>
> I'm still getting lockups. Same NGs too, so it may be something to do
> with the NGs themselves, however...
>
> Whats really ****ing things up at my end is that Pine lockssolid. No
> keyboard input, zip, diddly squat! I can't even cancel and end up
> rebooting the PC to get rid of the problem.
Are we talking about unix pine?
unix pine can always be killed like any other unix process. I have only
seldomly encountered situations where it did not respond to SIGTERM or
SIGHUP. Sometimes it took SIGSEGV on a partially stuck pine process. and
if all goes bad: SIGKILL will always work.
Mike
> On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, Mike wrote:
> > I'm still getting lockups. Same NGs too, so it may be something to do
> > with the NGs themselves, however...
> >
> > Whats really ****ing things up at my end is that Pine locks solid. No
> > keyboard input, zip, diddly squat! I can't even cancel and end up
> > rebooting the PC to get rid of the problem.
>
> Do you know what is going on in the PC? When you say that "Pine locks
> solid" you mean that you can't even kill it via the Task Manager (from
> CTRL-ALT-DELETE)?
>
> Is there disk activity? If so, could the NNTP server be doing something
> ridiculous like claim that there are millions of messages in the
> newsgroup, and the "lock up" is really Windows trying to create swap space
> for so many messages?
Interesting! I'm using Linux though.
Mike
Aha! This looks like the next thing to look at! I'll give this a go
right now.
Mike
> On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, Mike wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, Mike wrote:
> >
> > Something or other.....
> >
> > Its happing again!
> >
> > I'm still getting lockups. Same NGs too, so it may be something to do
> > with the NGs themselves, however...
> >
> > Whats really ****ing things up at my end is that Pine lockssolid. No
> > keyboard input, zip, diddly squat! I can't even cancel and end up
> > rebooting the PC to get rid of the problem.
>
> Are we talking about unix pine?
>
> unix pine can always be killed like any other unix process. I have only
> seldomly encountered situations where it did not respond to SIGTERM or
> SIGHUP. Sometimes it took SIGSEGV on a partially stuck pine process. and
> if all goes bad: SIGKILL will always work.
>
>
I'll look these up and learn how to use them. Thanks for the info.
When I swapped to Linux I figured half the problems I'd encounter may
be a lack of knowlege about the large range of options Linux presents.
I still get the feeling things may sometimes be more complicated than
they need to be but..... ;-}
Mike
?
If Pine is so fatally flawed, why do so many people use it?
Surely there are workrounds for the things still being worked on?
Mike
Point taken. ;-}
Richard Cohen
>
>> > Oh, if only someone could produce a CL browser that rendered graphics!
>> > I'd never need a GUI again!
>>
>> Slrn, which I use, has good facilities for decoding binary news articles, if
>> that's what you mean, and it also uses effective ASCII art to depict article
>> threads, if *that's* what you mean.
>
> Nope! What I was refering to was a fully operational www browser, maybe
> something like Lynx, but able to render things like graphics, tables
> etc, functioning along similar lines to regular GUI browsers.
Ah-ha! You'd be wanting w3m-img (akak w3m version 0.3 or newer) - it's w3m,
with the ability to display images as long as you're running under X. It's
quite impressive...
> It crossed my mind that if ID and other games companies could produce
> DOS games that had their own graphics drivers, why not a CL browser
> with it's own graphics rendering apps? WWW browsing is about the only
> thing that really needs graphics really, and this fantasy browser could
> also be recruted by other apps as a support app when graphic rendering
> is called for. Or maybe the Pine development team could look into this
> idea and expand Pine into an internet super CL app along the lines of
> the old SMART DOS based office suite of the early 80s?
>
> Just dreaming and hoping!
I find hopping is more fun... :-)
> Mike
Cheers
Richard
Mark Crispin
> Why is Pine downloading millions of messages? (sic). Why not be more
> realistic and let the user say how many messages s/he wants to download
> and set the default to be a high number. I see no reason why Pine needs to
> download the information on all of them when the last few of them are what
> the user really need.
Pine does not download millions of messages.
But, if you ask to sort a newsgroup, Pine will need the millions of
overviews in order to do the sort or thread. Remember that you can
unexclude from a view.
And if the NNTP server lies in the LISTGROUP command and/or fails to
return useful information in the XOVER command from the article ids
retuned by LISTGROUP, then Pine is obliged to download headers.
It all comes down to whether you have an NNTP server that implements NNTP
according to specification, or an NNTP server that haphazardly does
something like NNTP in the assumption that all newsreading programs ignore
article IDs that are marked in .newsrc
Eduardo Chappa
:) > It has been known for quite some time that Pine takes long (really
:) > long) time to open newsgroups with certain servers, and as far as I
:) > know these problems have never been solved, so my advice is to do
:) > what Pine is been telling you all along: use another news reader.
:)
:) ?
:)
:) If Pine is so fatally flawed, why do so many people use it? Surely
:) there are workrounds for the things still being worked on?
The key word in the paragraph I wrote is "certain", as opposed to "all". I
did not intend to say that it was Pine's fault. I use Pine to read news,
but if I had the problems described here from the beginning, I would have
no doubt in using another program to read news.
Sebastian Jester
> It all comes down to whether you have an NNTP server that implements NNTP
> according to specification, or an NNTP server that haphazardly does
> something like NNTP in the assumption that all newsreading programs ignore
> article IDs that are marked in .newsrc
That's a bit like saying "An S-class Mercedes is the best car in the world,
and if you get struck trying to drive across the Sahara desert in one, that's
the Sahara's fault".
The situation is the same with standards compliance on the WWW. You may have
written a perfectly standards-compliant browser, but users still want to be
able to see all those web pages whose authors didn't bother to adhere to the
standards.
I think that the ability to cope with non-standard-conforming servers is an
important feature of web browsers. Similarly, if slrn or whatever copes better
with non-compliant news servers than pine, and people are faced with these
news servers, then slrn is the better software for them. Mercedes isn't asking
for the Sahara desert to be paved, they make off-road vehicles.
I still find pine the most intuitive news reader, because you do everything
the same way as for mails. I just can't be bothered to learn how to use
another text-mode newsreader, and netscape is way too clumsy. But you have to
admit that all posts in this and other NGs from people who have compared pine
and other UN*X news readers do not prefer pine. There has to be a reason.
Sebastian Jester
--
Don't want spam from posting to newsgroups? DON'T post anonymously!
Get yourself a separate free email address with a webmail provider.
Report spammers at http://spamcop.net
WARNING: message is read after reading.
Eduardo Chappa
:) On Wed, 17 Jul 2002, Eduardo Chappa wrote:
:) > Why is Pine downloading millions of messages? (sic). Why not be more
:) > realistic and let the user say how many messages s/he wants to download
:) > and set the default to be a high number. I see no reason why Pine needs to
:) > download the information on all of them when the last few of them are what
:) > the user really need.
:)
:) Pine does not download millions of messages.
Right, it only downloads millions of headers.
:) But, if you ask to sort a newsgroup, Pine will need the millions of
:) overviews in order to do the sort or thread. Remember that you can
:) unexclude from a view.
Simply because a server expires messages, you do not have access to all
full threads, that's just a fact of life. You can make the user decide to
expire more articles if s/he decides to do so, in order to improve speed.
Just for you to understand me, unexclude does not have to unexclude all
possible messages. For example, say that there are 2000 messages for a
newsgroup, but the user configured Pine to download only the last 300
messages, and the user realizes that one of the threads s/he is reading is
incomplete. You can have different "unexclude" commands: one that
unexcludes with respect to the 2000 messages available, one that unexclude
with respect to the 300 messages that you have in your index and one that
unexcludes 300 more messages (or as many as you want to unexclude from the
1700 remaining, and so on).
Also, my patch for fancy thread warns you when the parent is missing,
which is useful to identify if you need to unexclude messages and with 300
messages in the index, it's very likely that many threads will be
complete, and we know very well that you can sort a folder regardless of
missing messages.
:) And if the NNTP server lies in the LISTGROUP command and/or fails to
:) return useful information in the XOVER command from the article ids
:) retuned by LISTGROUP, then Pine is obliged to download headers.
Fine, but your point is not that you have to download them all?, or is it?
:) It all comes down to whether you have an NNTP server that implements
:) NNTP according to specification, or an NNTP server that haphazardly
:) does something like NNTP in the assumption that all newsreading
:) programs ignore article IDs that are marked in .newsrc
Well, maybe Pine should have workarounds for those kind of servers, after
all Pine users are suffering, not the server, nor their implementors.
Mark Crispin
> > It all comes down to whether you have an NNTP server that implements NNTP
> > according to specification, or an NNTP server that haphazardly does
> > something like NNTP in the assumption that all newsreading programs ignore
> > article IDs that are marked in .newsrc
> That's a bit like saying "An S-class Mercedes is the best car in the world,
> and if you get struck trying to drive across the Sahara desert in one, that's
> the Sahara's fault".
More accurately, it's like saying "if you get stuck trying to drive a car
through a road that is washed out and has quicksand in the washouts, the
problem is the road, not the car; and it really doesn't matter that you
could get across the road with a Humvee."
> I still find pine the most intuitive news reader, because you do everything
> the same way as for mails. I just can't be bothered to learn how to use
> another text-mode newsreader, and netscape is way too clumsy. But you have to
> admit that all posts in this and other NGs from people who have compared pine
> and other UN*X news readers do not prefer pine. There has to be a reason.
If I knew how to make Pine work reasonably with those broken NNTP servers
(and without breaking Pine with our NNTP servers), that would have been
done so a long time ago.
I have yet to find any method to the madness that I see in the logs from
these servers. LISTGROUP declares that an article ID exists. But then
XOVER gives an error. Or a fetch of the article fails. Or it works to
fetch the article header, but fetch of the article text fails. Or XOVER
proceeds to tell me about articles that LISTGROUP didn't reveal. And
sometimes, there are many thousands of these phantom article IDs from
LISTGROUP.
Apparently, what we are seeing are the remnants of old, long-expired
articles which, for whatever reason, the NNTP server has not purged.
I don't know what slrn, etc. do, but I suspect that they make no attempt
to find out what articles actually exist, but instead simply start with
the first article not marked in .newsrc.
There's another detail. The whole reason why LISTGROUP is used is that on
working NNTP servers the use of LISTGROUP makes Pine *much* faster. I can
open a group with thousands of articles in under a second. If we couldn't
use LISTGROUP, that would make newsreading slower for everybody at UW (and
every other site with working NNTP servers who are wondering what all the
flames are about Pine not working well with news).
Since Pine source code is freely distributed, perhaps instead of flaming
us it would be more productive to figure out what Pine is doing wrong and
fix it. Of course, doing so runs the risk of breaking Pine on the NNTP
servers with which it runs well (delightfully, in fact), and being flamed
to a crisp by the users of those NNTP servers (and us). But that's life
in the real world.
Eduardo Chappa
:) On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, Sebastian Jester wrote:
:) > > It all comes down to whether you have an NNTP server that
:) > > implements NNTP according to specification, or an NNTP server that
:) > > haphazardly does something like NNTP in the assumption that all
:) > > newsreading programs ignore article IDs that are marked in .newsrc
:) > That's a bit like saying "An S-class Mercedes is the best car in the
:) > world, and if you get struck trying to drive across the Sahara desert
:) > in one, that's the Sahara's fault".
:)
:) More accurately, it's like saying "if you get stuck trying to drive a
:) car through a road that is washed out and has quicksand in the
:) washouts, the problem is the road, not the car; and it really doesn't
:) matter that you could get across the road with a Humvee."
What I disagree with these two comparisons is that both seem to believe
that they know what road they are driving on, I think it's more accurate
to say that you are driving blindly and have no idea on the road that you
are driving, you have to find the road that you are driving by the bumps
that you feel (hey that sounds like an inverse problem!).
If you are not moving because of the road, then of course it's the road's
fault, but then nobody buys a car to just figure out that they can't ride
the road that they are driving on, specially when others have a "smooth"
ride on it.
:) Since Pine source code is freely distributed, perhaps instead of
:) flaming us it would be more productive to figure out what Pine is doing
:) wrong and fix it.
My comments are not flames, I hope that you understand the difference
between the two.
Tzafrir Cohen
> Since Pine source code is freely distributed, perhaps instead of flaming
> us it would be more productive to figure out what Pine is doing wrong and
> fix it.Of course, doing so runs the risk of breaking Pine on the NNTP
> servers with which itruns well (delightfully, in fact), and being flamed
> to a crisp by the users of those NNTP servers (and us).But that's life
> in the real world.
Or, alternatively, bloat pine's code a bit more with two implementations,
and allow selection (per-server?) at run-time ("enable-broken-nntp-server"
or something)
Mike
Ok, but thats not what I was saying. I've read though and understand
there are a lot of dodgy nntp servers out their, and that Pine was
written to work as well as possible on functional servers, therefore
many of the problems a Pine user may face are not the fault of Pine nor
it's development. I also accept that Pine would be uneccessarily
compromised if compensatory code was introduced to cope with other
remote applications problems (is this sounding like an anti-M$ comment
yet? ;-}).
All I was commenting on was the "don't like it, go away" that seemed to
be hovering somewhere in your response. My comment was not "Pine
sucks!", I think Pine is a brilliant example of how software can and
IMO should be constructed and indeed operate. What I WAS saying is... If this is a know
problem, surely either a workround, or a way of getting out of the
sandpits these other dodgy setups cause would be in order and not too
difficult to impliment? So far, the only way out of the 'sorting' loop
trap seems to be either nuke a running Pine, or user another
newsreader. My suggestions was, if my experience is not of my own
causing (newbie, remember?) then surely a cancel option that does not
cancel when REALLY needed should be regarded as a bug?
Just for interest's sake, I went back to the offending NG and left
Pine 'sorting' for a long time. When I came back to the PC the 2nd
time, I had nearly 9,000 headers to wade through. I doubt
if Agent could have done this task any faster on a 56k DUN line, though
with Agent I could have at least cancelled the operation.
So, having read though people's comments and done some more
experimenting and FAQ reading, I've figured out Pine is NOT broken, and
is not disfunctional, but some servers may be. I've also figured out my
own workround for the 'sorting' loop which is not a loop but a
truckload of data cloggin up my DUN with no indicator in Pine to let me
know anything is happening (stuck on 0). All I need to do is limit new
NG articles to about 300 and I'll see something within a reasonable
timescale.
Q?
How do I do do this?
I know I can add a line to pinerc, but what is it?
Is there another (better) way?
P.S. Thanks for all the info so far chaps!
Eduardo Chappa
:) On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, Eduardo Chappa wrote:
:)
:) > *** Mike (snipthism...@blueyonder.co.uk) wrote in
:) > comp.mail.pine today:
:) >
:) > :) > It has been known for quite some time that Pine takes long
:) > :) > (really long) time to open newsgroups with certain servers, and
:) > :) > as far as I know these problems have never been solved, so my
:) > :) > advice is to do what Pine is been telling you all along: use
:) > :) > another news reader.
:) > :)
:) > :) ?
:) > :)
:) > :) If Pine is so fatally flawed, why do so many people use it? Surely
:) > :) there are workrounds for the things still being worked on?
:) >
:) > The key word in the paragraph I wrote is "certain", as opposed to
:) > "all". I did not intend to say that it was Pine's fault. I use Pine
:) > to read news, but if I had the problems described here from the
:) > beginning, I would have no doubt in using another program to read
:) > news.
:)
:) Ok, but thats not what I was saying. I've read though and understand
:) there are a lot of dodgy nntp servers out their, and that Pine was
:) written to work as well as possible on functional servers, therefore
:) many of the problems a Pine user may face are not the fault of Pine nor
:) it's development. I also accept that Pine would be uneccessarily
:) compromised if compensatory code was introduced to cope with other
:) remote applications problems (is this sounding like an anti-M$ comment
:) yet? ;-}).
I suppose you have your reasons to accept this, but for most people a
delay of 10 minutes to open a newsgroup makes that software ususable. I
only used Pine to read news once through an isp, now extinct, and the
delay time it took to open comp.mail.pine (a small newsgroup) made me
realize that Pine is not the way to read newsgroups in that particular
ISP.
:) All I was commenting on was the "don't like it, go away" that seemed to
:) be hovering somewhere in your response.
You said that, I never intended to say that. I just told you that your
problem does not have a solution within Pine, that you should use another
program to read news with your isp.
[deleted]
:) My suggestions was, if my experience is not of my own causing (newbie,
:) remember?) then surely a cancel option that does not cancel when REALLY
:) needed should be regarded as a bug?
I've had that problem before, supposedly cancel should cancel when Pine
should check for e-mail, but as you have seen, it does not work. I also
think it's a bug.
:) Just for interest's sake, I went back to the offending NG and left Pine
:) 'sorting' for a long time. When I came back to the PC the 2nd time, I
:) had nearly 9,000 headers to wade through. I doubt if Agent could have
:) done this task any faster on a 56k DUN line, though with Agent I could
:) have at least cancelled the operation.
Let us know if Agent does a better/worse job. It would certainly be
interesting to see a comparison.
[deleted]
:) All I need to do is limit new NG articles to about 300 and I'll see
:) something within a reasonable timescale.
:)
:) Q?
:) How do I do do this?
:) I know I can add a line to pinerc, but what is it?
:) Is there another (better) way?
No way to do this within Pine, as I have mentioned several times already.
You will have to suffer waiting until Pine is ready to handle your input.
There are workarounds, though, having to do with using telnet and manually
editing you .newsrc file, but this has nothing to do with Pine.
Sebastian Jester
> If I knew how to make Pine work reasonably with those broken NNTP servers
> (and without breaking Pine with our NNTP servers), that would have been
> done so a long time ago.
OK, maybe those people using those newsservers don't really care for what they
get, as long as they get *something* without a ten-minute wait...