Re: Changing Default News Server

[David Watson <watson@wink.corp.sgi.com>]

> Lal Samuel Varghese <lal@max.miel.mot.com> writes:
> > I want to change my default news server from x to y.
> > What all should I do to ensure a smooth transition?
>
> What's a smooth transition?  Keeping the read articles as read, and the
> unread as unread?  That is not possible due to the nature of news
> distribution.
> -- 
> Lars Balker Rasmussen
> <URL:http://www.daimi.aau.dk/~gnort/>  <URL:mailto:lars@rasmussen.org>


Years ago I wrote a quick script to read the active files on the old and
new servers as close to simultaneously as possible, then, for each
newsgroup found on the new server, take the delta between the high
article numbers on the two servers, and apply that delta as a correction
to the corresponding line in the reader's .newsrc file.  In my script, I
only changed the number of the highest article read, not all the
individual article numbers on the line, but I suppose you could alter
those too, according to the the old/new server delta, and hope that the
resulting articles weren't canceled or expired too differently on the
new server.  Anyway, the method achieved generally successful results
according to the users.  I can't find a copy of the script to post here,
but it was fairly straightforward.

  -David.