When the news server is dead and buried...?

When the news server is dead and buried...?

[Jonas Steverud]

The news server my ISP has had and I've been using is dead (it died
last summer, I think, and it was never well maintained, quite the
opposite) and I'm quite convinced it is also buried with a stake
though its heart. I.e. I won't see it anylonger.

I've decided that I will leave USENET anyway, due to the Spam-problem,
and hence has a bit of an intersting problem I would like some help
with solving.

I get all my email by POP and store it in nnfolders. I currently have
two POP accounts, using mail-sources, and in the future they might
become more of them.

Since I don't read news, can I instead let my email be my primary
server/source? I know it was a problem in the old days (pre-pGnus?),
but what about these days?

If that cannot be done without a lot of hassle (having problem with my
email is not an option), any suggestions of how I can get Gnus to
ignore the "primary" news server? gnus-no-server is one option, but it
only looks at group levels of 1 and 2 and I create mail groups
frequently and it will get out of sync every now and then (i.e. I will
forget about setting the group level for the new groups) since new
groups get the gnus-level-default-subscribed level. (I don't think it
is a good idea to set gnus-level-default-subscribed to 2, if I start
to use some news server - like I had a look at Gmane for a while.)

Is there a variable which is a list of regexps and then the regexp
that matches the group sets the group level. E.g.

(setq gnus-level-default-subscribed
      '(("nnfolder:Foobar\\." . 2)
        ("nnfolder:Bar\\." . 2)
        ("nnfolder:Email\\." . 3)
        ("nnmh:Lists\\." . 1)
        ("nntp+.*gmane.*:" . 2)
        (".*" . 3)))

(Is this a feature that we want, BTW?)

The bottom line: I currently have some problems with the lack of a
working news server and am looking for ways to solve them. All
suggestions are welcome. Using Gmane as the primary server is one
solution but not one I'm happy with since I prefer email over news for
mailing lists (it's a good idea for an archive though), and I think it
is a slow solution for a "placeholder solution".

Any ideas?

(Gnus v5.10.6 if it matters.)

-- 
(        http://hem.bredband.net/steverud/        !     Wei Wu Wei     )
(        Meaning of U2 Lyrics, Roleplaying        !  To Do Without Do  )

Re: When the news server is dead and buried...?

[Jouni K Seppanen]

Jonas Steverud <tvrud@bredband.net> writes:

> If that cannot be done without a lot of hassle (having problem with my
> email is not an option), any suggestions of how I can get Gnus to
> ignore the "primary" news server?

You could use nnnil as the primary backend.

-- 
Jouni K Seppänen

Re: When the news server is dead and buried...?

[Jonas Steverud]

Jouni K Seppanen <jks@iki.fi> writes:

> Jonas Steverud <tvrud@bredband.net> writes:
>
>> If that cannot be done without a lot of hassle (having problem with my
>> email is not an option), any suggestions of how I can get Gnus to
>> ignore the "primary" news server?
>
> You could use nnnil as the primary backend.

It is an interesting idea, but it would be nice to be able to use
nnfolder and my email as the primary source. (Mostly becourse I don't
like to do "j nnfolder:Ding RET" when I can do "j Ding" instead. Yes,
I'm lazy.)

Does anyone remember what the problem was in The Old Days® and if it
still is a problem?

(I tried to reply to Adam Sjøgren's mail, but I received the following
error each time:
     Error: improper use of 8-bit data in message header
I think it was the In-Reply-To header that was offending the server.)

-- 
(        http://hem.bredband.net/steverud/        !     Wei Wu Wei     )
(        Meaning of U2 Lyrics, Roleplaying        !  To Do Without Do  )

Re: When the news server is dead and buried...?

[Paul Jarc]

Jonas Steverud <tvrud@bredband.net> wrote:
> I don't like to do "j nnfolder:Ding RET" when I can do "j Ding"
> instead.

(setq gnus-group-jump-to-group-prompt "nnfolder:")


paul

Re: When the news server is dead and buried...?

[Adam Sjøgren]

On Mon, 08 Mar 2004 11:52:01 +0100, Jonas wrote:

> Since I don't read news, can I instead let my email be my primary
> server/source? I know it was a problem in the old days (pre-pGnus?),
> but what about these days?

Maybe you could set your primary select method to be nnnil, and let
everything else stay as it is?

,----[ nnnil.el ]
| ;; nnnil is a Gnus backend that provides no groups or articles.  It's useful
| ;; as a primary select method when you want all your real select methods to
| ;; be secondary or foreign.
`----


  Best regards,

-- 
 "Mr. Cotton's... parrot. Same question."                     Adam Sjøgren
                                                         asjo@koldfront.dk

Re: When the news server is dead and buried...?

[Jesper Harder]

spamtrap@koldfront.dk (Adam Sjøgren) writes:

> On Mon, 08 Mar 2004 11:52:01 +0100, Jonas wrote:

Jonas, your articles aren't propagating:

$ telnet news.gnus.org nntp
200 quimby.gnus.org InterNetNews NNRP server INN 2.3.2 ready (posting ok).

article <m2u10z627i.fsf@Neocortex.local>
430 No such article

Re: When the news server is dead and buried...?

[Jonas Steverud]

Jesper Harder <harder@ifa.au.dk> writes:

> spamtrap@koldfront.dk (Adam Sjøgren) writes:
>
>> On Mon, 08 Mar 2004 11:52:01 +0100, Jonas wrote:
>
> Jonas, your articles aren't propagating:

What? You lost me entirely there...

-- 
(        http://hem.bredband.net/steverud/        !     Wei Wu Wei     )
(        Meaning of U2 Lyrics, Roleplaying        !  To Do Without Do  )

Re: When the news server is dead and buried...?

[Jesper Harder]

Jesper Harder <harder@ifa.au.dk> writes:

> spamtrap@koldfront.dk (Adam Sjøgren) writes:
>
>> On Mon, 08 Mar 2004 11:52:01 +0100, Jonas wrote:
>
> Jonas, your articles aren't propagating:

They are still dropped.  I could see your reply on the web interface
at news.gmane.org, but it never reaches news.gnus.org.

Other people's posts through gmane _do_ get through, so maybe it's
something specific about your posts.  Dunno, maybe ask in the
gmane.discuss.

Re: When the news server is dead and buried...?

[Jonas Steverud]

Jesper Harder <harder@ifa.au.dk> writes:

[...]
> They are still dropped.  I could see your reply on the web interface
> at news.gmane.org, but it never reaches news.gnus.org.
>
> Other people's posts through gmane _do_ get through, so maybe it's
> something specific about your posts.  Dunno, maybe ask in the
> gmane.discuss.

I send the messages to ding@gnus.org so I think it is a matter if
configuration for the servers. The mails obviously reaches the mailing
list.

I don't use X-No-Archive or anything similar.

-- 
(        http://hem.bredband.net/steverud/        !     Wei Wu Wei     )
(        Meaning of U2 Lyrics, Roleplaying        !  To Do Without Do  )

Re: When the news server is dead and buried...?

[Jesper Harder]

Jesper Harder <harder@ifa.au.dk> writes:

> They are still dropped.  I could see your reply on the web interface
> at news.gmane.org, but it never reaches news.gnus.org.

,----[ pasted from the web ]
| I send the messages to ding <at> gnus.org so I think it is a matter if
| configuration for the servers. The mails obviously reaches the mailing
| list.
`----

Oh well, but news.gnus.org clearly doesn't like you -- all of your
recent posts are missing, and it doesn't seem to happen for anyone
else.

I don't see anything obviously suspicious about your headers ... hmm,
maybe your message-id is a bit dodgy.

Re: When the news server is dead and buried...?

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Mon, 08 Mar 2004, tvrud@bredband.net wrote:

> I've decided that I will leave USENET anyway, due to the
> Spam-problem, and hence has a bit of an intersting problem I would
> like some help with solving.

With the latest spam.el (in nGnus as well, IIRC) the
spam-autodetect-methods group/topic parameter lets you detect spam in
newsgroups as well, in case you go back to USENET some day :)

Ted

Re: When the news server is dead and buried...?

[mailla]

Jonas Steverud <tvrud <at> bredband.net> writes:

> I've decided that I will leave USENET anyway, due to the Spam-problem,

Please don't ! We, as regular Gnus user, have been introduced a major 
killer-feature to beat spam. It is efficient though quite slow and more
it works ! 

> The bottom line: I currently have some problems with the lack of a
> working news server and am looking for ways to solve them. All
> suggestions are welcome. Using Gmane as the primary server is one
> solution but not one I'm happy with since I prefer email over news for
> mailing lists (it's a good idea for an archive though), and I think it

I recently switched to Gmane services with which I am more confortable. 
In fact when you are subscribed (as I am), fetching/splitting/scoring/
filtering take many many time. 

At the opposite, consultation of a newsgroup group doesn't imply all
this process. You don't have to fetch mails you wouldn't read and stuff
like that.

Sorry that doesn't answer to your questions.

Regards,

zeDek

Re: When the news server is dead and buried...?

[Jonas Steverud]

mailla <maillaxa@essilor.fr> writes:

> Jonas Steverud <tvrud <at> bredband.net> writes:
>
>> I've decided that I will leave USENET anyway, due to the Spam-problem,
>
> Please don't ! We, as regular Gnus user, have been introduced a major 
> killer-feature to beat spam. It is efficient though quite slow and more
> it works ! 

The problem is not the spam in the group but the spam that is sent to
the email adress I have in the From line. And I don't see any solution
to this. The spammers seems to be incredible stupid, according to what
I've read the The Register¹, they seems to send a spam even to
"JoeRemoveToReplyDoe@nospam.hotmail.com". That means that if I supply
a bogus email address it will only increase the mail traffic on the
'Net and no one will be able to reach me even if they have real/legal
reasons to do so.

By posting on USENET I will receive a lot of spam, I will see a lot of
st00pid comments and a lot of flames. Email lists tends to have a
higher quality since they require people to do a minimum bit of work
to be able to begin to post and people that has given up their interest
in the topic unsubscribes to reduce the amount of email they get. And
the st00pid ones can be kicked out.

(I hate web forums becourse they never are close to USENET's and
mailingslist's threading capabilities and are too close to
chat/IRCs. But web forums are all the vogue in Sweden today, and when
one can get a email digest of the forums it is in a newly invented
format that probably is unreadable even in LookOut Express.)

/Jonas, ranting a bit
-------
¹  www.theregister.co.uk

-- 
(        http://hem.bredband.net/steverud/        !     Wei Wu Wei     )
(        Meaning of U2 Lyrics, Roleplaying        !  To Do Without Do  )