From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/30237 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Markus Leypold Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: Gnus reads megabytes from NNTP on startup? Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 15:05:56 +0200 (CEST) Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: <200004231305.PAA02654@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035166799 7391 80.91.224.250 (21 Oct 2002 02:19:59 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 02:19:59 +0000 (UTC) Cc: ding@gnus.org Return-Path: Original-Received: from lisa.math.uh.edu (lisa.math.uh.edu [129.7.128.49]) by mailhost.sclp.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 951B4D051E for ; Sun, 23 Apr 2000 09:06:25 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu (lists@Sina.HPC.UH.EDU [129.7.3.5]) by lisa.math.uh.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id IAB09224; Sun, 23 Apr 2000 08:06:20 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Sun, 23 Apr 2000 08:05:51 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: from mailhost.sclp.com (postfix@sclp3.sclp.com [204.252.123.139]) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA03159 for ; Sun, 23 Apr 2000 08:05:41 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: from toulon.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de (toulon.Informatik.Uni-Tuebingen.De [134.2.12.9]) by mailhost.sclp.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C12B5D051E for ; Sun, 23 Apr 2000 09:05:58 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: from informatik.uni-tuebingen.de (wintermute [134.2.12.56]) by toulon.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3D16E111D; Sun, 23 Apr 2000 15:05:56 +0200 (MST) Original-Received: (from leypold@localhost) by informatik.uni-tuebingen.de (8.9.3/8.9.3) id PAA02654; Sun, 23 Apr 2000 15:05:56 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from leypold@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de) X-Authentication-Warning: wintermute.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de: leypold set sender to leypold@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de using -f Original-To: sperber@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de In-reply-to: (sperber@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de) Precedence: list X-Majordomo: 1.94.jlt7 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:30237 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:30237 > > Lars> sperber@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de (Michael Sperber [Mr. Preprocessor]) writes: > > >> A FAQ around here from new Gnus users is that, when they start Gnus > >> from scratch, it reads >100Megabytes from the nntp server for hours, > >> and then they give up. I've usually told people to fiddle with > >> > >> `gnus-read-active-file' and `gnus-check-new-newsgroups', > >> > >> but they tell me it doesn't help. > > Lars> If `gnus-read-active-file' is `some' (which is the default), Gnus > Lars> shouldn't be reading megs of stuff on startup... > > Actually, the problem has turned out to be something else entirely. > Because of some administrative fuckup, my co-worker's machine didn't > have permissions to use the NNTP server in question. The server would > send: > > 480 Authentication required for command > > ... but Gnus would just plod on, and fill up Emacs with zillions of > copies of this message. I haven't studied the problem in detail, > which is why I haven't followed up. Hello Friends, I'm the co-worker in question. Thanks to Mike S for sending the original bug report (or something to that effect). I just would like to fill in some details: * IP->name DNS Lookup for my machine was not working if done by the news server. * The news server (for some obscure reason) had been set up in a way to refuse *some* commands with '480 Authentication required for command'. I could say 'help' but not 'list active' to the server (tried it with telnet). * In this situation Gnus is asking me actually for a password and a username and presumably also authenticates (or tries to). But then it does not recognize, that this fails and loops, reading 150Megs of 'Authentication required for command' from the server. > A comment about the last point: It seems to me, that this means, that Gnus is sending commands to the server for every line of 'Authentication required for command' which is returned. So the problem could not be just a single attempt to 'list active'. * Setting `gnus-read-active-file' to nil did not help. This was my original approach. This might be, because the loop in question does not occur in reading the the active file but somewhere else (see comment above) but I also had the impression when skimming through the relevant code, that `gnus-read-active-file' doesn't work any more. * There are news servers, that react differently (You have no permission to talk, or something similar) to a machine with incomplete DNS entries. Gnus can handle this situation. * For me, this problem is 100% reproducible with this news server. I just remove part of the DNS entries for my client machine and voila: Gnus is running Amok. Regards -- Markus