Re: on downloading too much data when there's no news

[Wayne Harris <wharris1@protonmail.com>]

Adam Sjøgren <asjo@koldfront.dk> writes:

> Adam writes:
>
>> But now we are deeper into how Gnus works than what I know :-)
>
> It looks like you can configure Gnus to use GROUP instead of LIST
> ACTIVE:
>
> ,----[ C-h v nntp-server-list-active-group RET ]
> | nntp-server-list-active-group is a variable defined in ‘nntp.el’.
> | Its value is nil
> | 
> | Documentation:
> | If nil, then always use GROUP instead of LIST ACTIVE.
> | This is usually slower, but on misconfigured servers that don’t
> | update their active files often, this can help.
> | 
> | This is a Gnus server variable.  See Info node ‘(gnus)Select Methods’.
> `----

How can I build such a beautiful ASCII-sign like that? (Jealous!)

> So maybe try something similar to:
>
>         (nntp "fidonet" 
>               (nntp-server-list-active-group nil)
>               (nntp-address "news.fidonet.fi"))
>
> in your secondary select methods.

That improved my news reading so much.  It's so much faster now.  Thank
you so much for this great show of problem-solving skills.

Now, I'm looking at 

  https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3977#section-7.6.3

and it seems news.fidonet.net is not violating it.  The server does not
seem to advertise the READER capability.  I'm not sure how to see all
capabilities.  I suppose news.fidonet.fi just advertises what it says
when we connect and that's it.

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
7.6.3.  LIST ACTIVE

   This keyword MUST be supported by servers advertising the READER
   capability.

   LIST ACTIVE returns a list of valid newsgroups and associated
   information.  If no wildmat is specified, the server MUST include
   every group that the client is permitted to select with the GROUP
   command (Section 6.1.1).
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

> For me that helps, ngrep shows this when fetching news, subscribed to
> fidonews:

It helped amazingly!

>
>
>   asjo@tullinup:~$ sudo ngrep -q -Wbyline host news.fidonet.fi
>   interface: wlp82s0 (192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0)
>   filter: ( host news.fidonet.fi ) and ((ip || ip6) || (vlan && (ip || ip6)))
>
>   T 2a06:4001:d06f:0:909a:cc99:d2b8:3fa6:45732 -> 2001:41d0:401:3100::1030:119 [AP] #1
>   GROUP fidonews.
>
>
>   T 2001:41d0:401:3100::1030:119 -> 2a06:4001:d06f:0:909a:cc99:d2b8:3fa6:45732 [AP] #2
>   211 3290 1 3290 fidonews Group selected.

Why are you using ngrep and not just telnet here?