Re: bug? gnus unreliable for sympatico.ca news server

[kgreiner@xpediantsolutions.com]

* Tong * <sun_tong_001@yahoo.com> writes:

> Hi,
>
> Having newly moved to sympatico.ca news server, I found that gnus is
> extremely unreliable working under it. Sometime it works great, but
> most of the times, it just hung there -- the entire emacs doesn't
> respond to anything, even x-refresh request from window manager. I'm
> using gnus that is shipped with RH8. Meanwhile, Mozilla that comes
> with RH8 does not have any problem with the sympatico news server.
>
> It took me the entire afternoon and evening to trace down what could
> be wrong. I installed the nntpcache daemon, and watched closely the
> request (and respond) from Mozilla (and gnus) to/from the sympatico
> news server.
>
> When Mozilla requests a news article, it issues the following 3 commands:
>
> <- MODE READER
> <- GROUP comp.emacs
> <- ARTICLE 103393
>
> When gnus requests a news article however, it issues only the
> 'ARTICLE' command. This is where the problem is. The reason is as
> follows.
>
> The sympatico guys, in the effort to stop people fooling around with
> their news server, set a very short timeout limit between 'ARTICLE'
> command and 'GROUP' command. This is OK for Mozilla, but not OK for
> gnus, since gnus only issues 'GROUP' command once the group is
> selected. I now think that the reason why sometimes I can get
> everything working is because I happened to make the requests back to
> back, with minimum time delay in between. But when gnus has rested for
> a while, it will fail to request any further articles. The conclusion
> might be wrong here. It is based on my (careful) observation. I didn't
> open up gnus source to verify.
>
> Another thing I found about gnus is that when it hangs, I can break it
> out with ^G. But the problem is that there might be some internal
> state that is not cleared up, because further article requests will
> not be responded (no messages logs in messages buffer).
>
> I don't know who else are using the sympatico.ca news server, and
> whether they are suffering the same glitches that I am
> experiencing. Hope my effort (the whole afternoon and evening) can
> help gnus to improve. And hrrr, Anybody know a quick fix?
>
> thanks
>
> tong
>
>
> PS. the sympatico news server:
>
> NNTP server news1.on.sympatico.ca:
> 200 Bell Nexxia News Server (Twister v1.2.0)
>
> PPS. I'm not sure, but if you want to duplicate the reslult,
> installing the nntpcache daemon and set a very short connection
> timeout (5s) may help.

Thanks for the info.

The latest version of Oort gnus should fix this problem.  As I added a
timer to break out of hangs by closing the current connection then
opening a new connection and re-issuing the current command.

I'll look into added the GROUP command right before every ARTICLE as
that would help avoid unnecessary connection teardown and rebuild.

Kevin