Problem fetching parent article

Problem fetching parent article

[Emerick Rogul]

Hello,

I've always used '^' in gnus to fetch a parent article, but I've
recently noticed it's not working correctly (I'm using the latest gnus
from cvs - 5.8.4).

I went into a newsgroup today and hit ^ to fetch the parent article
and I got the "Can't fetch article ..." message.  I left the group and
and re-entered it to see all of the old messages, and the parent
article was in fact still available (and hitting ^ at this point did
do the right thing, btw).

Is this a bug with the current version or have I done something silly
in my init files?  Anyone else run into anything like this?

Thanks,

-Emerick
-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emerick Rogul       /\/  "when i'm getting serious about a girl, i show
emerick@cs.bu.edu   /\/   her 'rio bravo' and she better fucking like it."
------------------------------------------------------- quentin tarantino

Re: Problem fetching parent article

[Slawek Zak]

Emerick Rogul <emerick@cs.bu.edu> writes:

> Hello,
> 
> I've always used '^' in gnus to fetch a parent article, but I've
> recently noticed it's not working correctly (I'm using the latest gnus
> from cvs - 5.8.4).
> 
> I went into a newsgroup today and hit ^ to fetch the parent article
> and I got the "Can't fetch article ..." message.  I left the group and
> and re-entered it to see all of the old messages, and the parent
> article was in fact still available (and hitting ^ at this point did
> do the right thing, btw).
> 
> Is this a bug with the current version or have I done something silly
> in my init files?  Anyone else run into anything like this?

Try (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some). It didn't work for me
either before I used this setting.
-- 
"We use ni**gers, and it's all that drastic" --EPMD
Suavek Zak / PGP: finger://zaks@prioris.mini.pw.edu.pl

Re: Problem fetching parent article

[Emerick Rogul]

Slawek Zak writes:

: Emerick Rogul <emerick@cs.bu.edu> writes:
:: Hello,
:: 
:: I've always used '^' in gnus to fetch a parent article, but I've
:: recently noticed it's not working correctly (I'm using the latest gnus
:: from cvs - 5.8.4).
:: 
:: I went into a newsgroup today and hit ^ to fetch the parent article
:: and I got the "Can't fetch article ..." message.  I left the group and
:: and re-entered it to see all of the old messages, and the parent
:: article was in fact still available (and hitting ^ at this point did
:: do the right thing, btw).
:: 
:: Is this a bug with the current version or have I done something silly
:: in my init files?  Anyone else run into anything like this?

: Try (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some). It didn't work for me
: either before I used this setting.

Hmm...I just tried setting that value and I got the same behavior
(can't fetch a parent news article even though I _know_ it hasn't
expired yet).  On a whim, I tried running gnus (5.8.4) without any of
my config files loaded and it's also exhibiting this weird behavior.
Bug perhaps?  (No, never!... ;-)

-Emerick
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emerick Rogul             /\/     "how young are you, how old am i?
emerick@cs.bu.edu         /\/      let's count the rings around my eyes."
------------------------------------------------- 'i will dare', the mats

Re: Problem fetching parent article

[Harry Putnam]

Emerick Rogul <emerick@cs.bu.edu> writes:

> Hmm...I just tried setting that value and I got the same behavior
> (can't fetch a parent news article even though I _know_ it hasn't
> expired yet).  On a whim, I tried running gnus (5.8.4) without any of
> my config files loaded and it's also exhibiting this weird behavior.
> Bug perhaps?  (No, never!... ;-)

Also running recent (3-4)days 5.8.4 but not having that trouble.

Make sure the message ID that is in ^References:  is the one you think
it is.

I opened comp.editors .. found a thread with several entries went to
the third or fourth marking the previous ones read.  hit "^" and
jumped back up the tree.  Closed then reopene "M-g" and found an as
yet unread message in the same thread and even though the already read
messages weren't loaded ... the "^" still jumped back up the tree as
expected.

Can't think what might be causing your problem.  Only examine the
References field closely to be sure what is being called.

Re: Problem fetching parent article

[Emerick Rogul]

Harry Putnam writes:

: Emerick Rogul <emerick@cs.bu.edu> writes:
:: Hmm...I just tried setting that value and I got the same behavior
:: (can't fetch a parent news article even though I _know_ it hasn't
:: expired yet).  On a whim, I tried running gnus (5.8.4) without any of
:: my config files loaded and it's also exhibiting this weird behavior.
:: Bug perhaps?  (No, never!... ;-)

: Also running recent (3-4)days 5.8.4 but not having that trouble.

: Make sure the message ID that is in ^References:  is the one you think
: it is.

OK, I just copied the References header of one of the articles I can't
do a ^ on.  I then re-entered the group and retrieved all of the
articles.  When I tracked down the parent, its Message-ID did indeed
match the References header I had copied down.  Dang it...

So basically, ^ does the right thing for me only if the parent article
is currently displayed in the summary buffer.  If it's not there, I
get a "Can't find parent article blah-blah" message.  One other odd
thing is that an "A r" to fetch the entire thread does still work, so
I'm using that as a sort of work-around.  I even tried this with a new
.newsrc.eld file just in case something was corrupted, and I got the
same behavior.

Oh well, I'll keep futzing with it...

-Emerick
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emerick Rogul             /\/     "how young are you, how old am i?
emerick@cs.bu.edu         /\/      let's count the rings around my eyes."
------------------------------------------------- 'i will dare', the mats

Re: Problem fetching parent article

[David S. Goldberg]

Do you have any of the nov-is-evil variables set to t?  If so, that's
probably your problem.  Try setting it to nil but beware, if your news
server doesn't do NOV properly, or has broken NOV files (one of mine
did, regularly, the news admin was never able to figure out why so
many articles didn't get into the overview) then you may find that
more annoying than losing ^ and friends.
-- 
Dave Goldberg
Post: The Mitre Corporation\MS B325\202 Burlington Rd.\Bedford, MA 01730
Phone: 781-271-3887
Email: dsg@mitre.org

Re: Problem fetching parent article

[Karl Kleinpaste]

dsg@mitre.org (David S. Goldberg) writes:
> broken NOV files (one of mine
> did, regularly, the news admin was never able to figure out why so
> many articles didn't get into the overview

Insufficient server horsepower.  That's all.  BTDT.

In INN, a common occurrence in servers with a combination of too large
an active file (which is rewritten to disc too often) and too heavy an
article arrival load will cause the "overchan" process to backlog.
Eventually, innd's attempt to shovel data at the too-slow overchan
causes it to barf and complain about it, dropping a copious blob of
yet-to-be-dealt-with overview data in /var/spool/news/outgoing and
uttering a nefarious complaint in the news server log.

Solutions:
- "renice -20 <pid.of.overchan>" (you'd be surprised how much it helps)
- More server horsepower: Bigger memory, faster CPU, better discs.
- Trim the active file to remove groups that genuinely have no one
  reading them.
- Reduce the incoming feed.

Honestly, #3 is something that I ended up doing for unrelated reasons
a couple years ago.  On that day, my news server, INN 1.7.2+insync
running on a PPro 200MHz w/128Mbytes + 2*9G RAID0, went from sweating
at 95+% busy-ness, all day every day, to jogging comfortably at ~70%
busy-ness, according to the timer stats in the daily report.

I haven't had a problem with it since.

--karl