Agent and 'Couldn't open server'

Agent and 'Couldn't open server'

[Robert Epprecht]

I was downloading news into Gnus Agent, switched to another console,
did other things, switched my modem off, but forgot to tell the Agent
that gnus is unplugged...

Later I came back and wanted to read news. Gnus tells me, that it can't
connect and offers me to go offline.  As I do not really understand the
difference between offline and unplugged I answer 'n' and do 'J J'
instead.  But when I try to enter a group Gnus still tells me that it
'Couldn't open server'. This might be correct, but I would have expected
to read news from the Agents cache now.

What do you think?
Robert Epprecht

Re: Agent and 'Couldn't open server'

[Kevin Greiner]

Robert Epprecht <epprecht@solnet.ch> writes:

> I was downloading news into Gnus Agent, switched to another console,
> did other things, switched my modem off, but forgot to tell the Agent
> that gnus is unplugged...
>
> Later I came back and wanted to read news. Gnus tells me, that it can't
> connect and offers me to go offline.  As I do not really understand the
> difference between offline and unplugged I answer 'n' and do 'J J'
> instead.  But when I try to enter a group Gnus still tells me that it
> 'Couldn't open server'. This might be correct, but I would have expected
> to read news from the Agents cache now.
>
> What do you think?

Well, you left off one additional connection state: denied.  If you
are online but unable to connect to a server, you are given the choice
between changing the server's state from online to either offline
(i.e. use the agent) or denied (i.e. do not use the agent).  You
choosed the later which is why you're getting the "couldn't open
server" message.

Since you abnormally ended the agent's fetch operation, you may have
downloaded some articles that are not yet acknowledged by the agent.
Rather than downloading them again, you can execute M-x
gnus-agent-regenerate to recover them.

Kevin

Re: Agent and 'Couldn't open server'

[Robert Epprecht]

Kevin Greiner <kgreiner@xpediantsolutions.com> writes:

> Robert Epprecht <epprecht@solnet.ch> writes:
>
>> [ ... ] forgot to tell the Agent that gnus is unplugged...

>> [ ... ] and wanted to read news. Gnus tells me, that it can't
>> connect and offers me to go offline.  [ ... ] I answer 'n' and do 'J J'
>> instead.  But when I try to enter a group Gnus still tells me that it
>> 'Couldn't open server'.

> Well, you left off one additional connection state: denied.  If you
> are online but unable to connect to a server, you are given the choice
> between changing the server's state from online to either offline
> (i.e. use the agent) or denied (i.e. do not use the agent).  You
> choosed the later which is why you're getting the "couldn't open
> server" message.

So you say choosing not to go offline implies to switch to the 'denied'
state which means not to use the agent...  Ahh, I see. I did not get
that right.  [ testing... ] Yes, answering 'y' does what I want.

I guess there is a reason, why Gnus uses the word 'offline' and not
'unplugged' when it asks me what I want. (As I told already I do not
grok the difference between 'unplugged' and 'offline').

Thank you,
Robert.

Re: Agent and 'Couldn't open server'

[Kai Großjohann]

Robert Epprecht <epprecht@solnet.ch> writes:

> I guess there is a reason, why Gnus uses the word 'offline' and not
> 'unplugged' when it asks me what I want. (As I told already I do not
> grok the difference between 'unplugged' and 'offline').

After you tell Gnus to go unplugged, it switches all servers to this
state.  When Gnus tries to connect to a server but can't reach it, it
switches that server to offline status.

So offline is a kind of auto-unplugged.

Also, offline is for a single server, whereas plugged/unplugged is
somewhat universal.
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Re: Agent and 'Couldn't open server'

[Robert Epprecht]

> Robert Epprecht <epprecht@solnet.ch> writes:

>> I do not grok the difference between 'unplugged' and 'offline'.

Thank you Kai for your explanation, I think I get it much better now.

Robert

Re: Agent and 'Couldn't open server'

[Harry Putnam]

kai.grossjohann@gmx.net (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> Also, offline is for a single server, whereas plugged/unplugged is
> somewhat universal.

But only for agentized groups... or has that been changed?

Re: Agent and 'Couldn't open server'

[Kai Großjohann]

Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> writes:

> kai.grossjohann@gmx.net (Kai Großjohann) writes:
>
>> Also, offline is for a single server, whereas plugged/unplugged is
>> somewhat universal.
>
> But only for agentized groups... or has that been changed?

Only for agentized servers, that's right.

So plugged/unplugged applies to all agentized servers, whereas
offline applies to a single server only.  (Of course, more than one
server can be in offline state.)
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Re: Agent and 'Couldn't open server'

[Kai Großjohann]

Robert Epprecht <epprecht@solnet.ch> writes:

> I was downloading news into Gnus Agent, switched to another console,
> did other things, switched my modem off, but forgot to tell the Agent
> that gnus is unplugged...

It has happened to me, too.  I just hit `J j' which tries to go
unplugged.  It hangs when doing this, presumably because it can't
send the quit/exit commands to the servers.  I wait a bit and then
hit C-g.  This causes Gnus to be in unplugged mode, and afterwards it
is quite usable.

Probably the waiting a bit part is waving dead chickens.
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