gnus on XP

gnus on XP

[notbob]

Howdy.  emacs noob, here.

I'm occasionally stuck using a suck XP box instead of my beloved 
Slackware.  Being a CLI freak, I d/l'd emacs to use gnus.  But, so far 
no joy.  I ran runemacs.exe and even addpm.exe.  I also created a 
C:\.emacs and C:\.gnus file.  In .gnus, I put:

(setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "us.Usenet-News.net"))

I get:

Loading gnus-ml...done
Loading byte-opt...done
Opening nntp server on us.Usenet-News.net...
Denied server
Opening nntp server on us.Usenet-News.net...failed
gnus-select-newsgroup: Couldn't open server
exchange-point-and-mark: No mark set in this buffer

....after showing my newsserver in the stat bar and even offering up 
alt.os.linux.slackware newsgroup and I selecting it.

At no time am I promted for a username or password, which my service 
requires.  I'm reading emacs and news and faqs as fast as I can and have 
searched google and groups (to no avail), but sure could use some 
advice.  Also, is there a good emacs/gnus irc chat room?

Thank you
nb

Re: gnus on XP

[Tassilo Horn]

notbob <notbob@nothome.com> writes:

Hi!

> I'm occasionally stuck using a suck XP box instead of my beloved
> Slackware.  Being a CLI freak, I d/l'd emacs to use gnus.  But, so far
> no joy.  I ran runemacs.exe and even addpm.exe.  I also created a
> C:\.emacs and C:\.gnus file.  In .gnus, I put:
>
> (setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "us.Usenet-News.net"))
>
> I get:
>
> Loading gnus-ml...done
> Loading byte-opt...done
> Opening nntp server on us.Usenet-News.net...
> Denied server
> Opening nntp server on us.Usenet-News.net...failed
> gnus-select-newsgroup: Couldn't open server
> exchange-point-and-mark: No mark set in this buffer
>
> ....after showing my newsserver in the stat bar and even offering up
> alt.os.linux.slackware newsgroup and I selecting it.
>
> At no time am I promted for a username or password, which my service
> requires.  I'm reading emacs and news and faqs as fast as I can and
> have searched google and groups (to no avail), but sure could use some
> advice.

Try to create a file ~/.authinfo with these contents

  machine us.Usenet-News.net login your-user-name password your-password force yes

and try again.

> Also, is there a good emacs/gnus irc chat room?

There're #gnus and #emacs on irc.freenode.net.

Bye,
Tassilo
-- 
Scientifically speaking,  it is impossible  to charge Chuck  Norris with
"obstruction of justice." This is because even Chuck Norris cannot be in
two places at the same time.

Re: gnus on XP

[notbob]

notbob wrote:
> Howdy.  emacs noob, here.
> 
> I'm occasionally stuck using a suck XP box instead of my beloved 
> Slackware.  Being a CLI freak, I d/l'd emacs to use gnus.  But, so far 
> no joy.  I ran runemacs.exe and even addpm.exe.  I also created a 
> C:\.emacs and C:\.gnus file.  In .gnus, I put:

OK, it's official.  I'm losing my mind.

I've tried everything, even the whole foreign server thing, to no avail. 
  I had the firewall down and made sure no other news clients were open. 
  I even reloaded and re-installed emacs 22.1 after deleting all 
previous emacs files.  So, I then tried gnus (M-x gnus) in the new 
install and it should prompt me for a server.  Nope!  I get only this:

Loading gnus...done
Loading gnus-start...
Loading easymenu...done
Loading gnus-start...done
Loading gnus-agent...
Loading regexp-opt...done
Loading gnus-agent...done
Unable to open nntp:news, go offline? (y or n)  y

nntp (news) open error: ''.  Continue? (y or n)
Couldn't open server on news

IOW, this install is not even promting me for a server like emacs 21 in 
Slackware does.  It's like it's broken or something.  You can tell it's 
not looking or waiting for a response, it's just instantly throwing up 
the "Unable to open..." msg without doing anything.  I've been working 
on this daily since my orig post and have found zip on google groups, 
mailing lists, irc, etc.  WTF!?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

BTW, erc is killer.  Blows irssi away.  ;)

nb

Re: gnus on XP

[Chris McMahan]

What's preventing you from setting the server yourself, without
relying on the prompt?

(setq my_news_server "nntp.server.net")
(setq gnus-init-file (concat EMACS_PKGS "/.emacs-gnus"))

If you're wondering about the .emacs file, the locations are dependent
on your HOME environment variable. Open the control Panel -> System ->
Advanced (tab) -> Environment Variables

Add a HOME variable to your user settings with the appropriate value.

Launch emacs, and it will look there for your config files.

Better yet, try looking up some of the documentation that involves
emacs on windows. A lot has been written on getting emacs running
successfully on all flavors of windows, and I've been happily using it
on everything from NT3.5 to XP for 10 years now, with gnus!

- http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/CategoryWThirtyTwo
- http://ourcomments.org/Emacs/EmacsW32.html

Also, on a personal note, it doesn't help your cause much when you
refer to your "suck XP box". Your issue here doesn't seem to be XP
related at all.

- Chris


notbob <notbob@nothome.com> writes:

> notbob wrote:
>> Howdy.  emacs noob, here.
>>
>> I'm occasionally stuck using a suck XP box instead of my beloved
>> Slackware.  Being a CLI freak, I d/l'd emacs to use gnus.  But, so
>> far no joy.  I ran runemacs.exe and even addpm.exe.  I also created
>> a C:\.emacs and C:\.gnus file.  In .gnus, I put:
>
> OK, it's official.  I'm losing my mind.
>
> I've tried everything, even the whole foreign server thing, to no
> avail. I had the firewall down and made sure no other news clients
> were open. I even reloaded and re-installed emacs 22.1 after deleting
> all previous emacs files.  So, I then tried gnus (M-x gnus) in the new
> install and it should prompt me for a server.  Nope!  I get only this:
>
> Loading gnus...done
> Loading gnus-start...
> Loading easymenu...done
> Loading gnus-start...done
> Loading gnus-agent...
> Loading regexp-opt...done
> Loading gnus-agent...done
> Unable to open nntp:news, go offline? (y or n)  y
>
> nntp (news) open error: ''.  Continue? (y or n)
> Couldn't open server on news
>
> IOW, this install is not even promting me for a server like emacs 21
> in Slackware does.  It's like it's broken or something.  You can tell
> it's not looking or waiting for a response, it's just instantly
> throwing up the "Unable to open..." msg without doing anything.  I've
> been working on this daily since my orig post and have found zip on
> google groups, mailing lists, irc, etc.  WTF!?
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> BTW, erc is killer.  Blows irssi away.  ;)
>
> nb

-- 
     (.   .)
  =ooO=(_)=Ooo=====================================
  Chris McMahan | first_initiallastname@one.dot.net
  =================================================

Re: gnus on XP

[Reiner Steib]

On Tue, Feb 26 2008, notbob wrote:

> notbob wrote:
>> Howdy.  emacs noob, here.
>>
>> I'm occasionally stuck using a suck XP box instead of my beloved Slackware.
>> Being a CLI freak, I d/l'd emacs to use gnus.  But, so far no joy.  I ran
>> runemacs.exe and even addpm.exe.  I also created a C:\.emacs and C:\.gnus
>> file.  In .gnus, I put:
>> (setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "us.Usenet-News.net"))

> nntp (news) open error: ''.  Continue? (y or n)
> Couldn't open server on news
>
> IOW, this install is not even promting me for a server like emacs 21 in
> Slackware does.  

The default is to use "news".  (I don't know how it was in Emacs 21
i.e. Gnus 5.9)

Additional to ~/.gnus.el, ...

(setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "us.usenet-news.net"))

... add this to ~/.authinfo:

   machine us.usenet-news.net login YOUR_NAME force yes

See (info "(gnus)NNTP") for more information on ~/.authinfo.

You may also test using `gnus-group-browse-foreign-server':

B nntp RET us.usenet-news.net RET

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: gnus on XP

[notbob]

On 2008-02-26, Chris McMahan <first_initiallastname@one.dot.net> wrote:
> What's preventing you from setting the server yourself, without
> relying on the prompt?




> (setq my_news_server "nntp.server.net")
> (setq gnus-init-file (concat EMACS_PKGS "/.emacs-gnus"))

I've not run across those particular lisp cmds.  I've used:

(setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.somewhere.edu"))

...as indicated in sect 1.1 of the gnus manual and other sources.  I'll
definitely give it a try.

> If you're wondering about the .emacs file, the locations are dependent
> on your HOME environment variable. Open the control Panel -> System ->
> Advanced (tab) -> Environment Variables
>
> Add a HOME variable to your user settings with the appropriate value.

I've been using C:\ as my home and it's been finding it, no problem.  I have
other lisp settings like screen colors and highlighting there and they work
just fine.  But, thank you for the Environment Variables tip.  I may try
creating a NNTP=my.news.server variable and see how that works.

> Launch emacs, and it will look there for your config files.  

> Better yet, try looking up some of the documentation that involves
> emacs on windows. A lot has been written on getting emacs running
> successfully on all flavors of windows, and I've been happily using it
> on everything from NT3.5 to XP for 10 years now, with gnus!

I'm very happy for you.  I've read all I can find including the GNU Emacs
FAQ for Windows, the utah.edu install, NYU, the gnus.org manuals,
etc.  No help.

> - http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/CategoryWThirtyTwo
> - http://ourcomments.org/Emacs/EmacsW32.html

Been there, read those.  I'm not ready to start using emacs variants, yet.
Other than the gnus issue, emacs seems to be a pretty good option for me on
XP.  

> Also, on a personal note, it doesn't help your cause much when you
> refer to your "suck XP box". Your issue here doesn't seem to be XP
> related at all.

There can be no doubt it's just my subjective opinion that XP sucks, but I
stand by it.  As an M$ user since DOS, I've more than earned the right to
dislike Windows as a product and everything M$ stands for.  And yes, this
problem seems to be XP related entirely.  I have no problem with emacs/gnus
on any *nix platforms.  They all work perfectly out of the box, unlike emacs
for Windows.  But, I'll take the rap and keep trying because that's the way
I am, stubborn.  I appreciate your response and I'll give your suggestion a
try.  Thank you.

nb

Re: gnus on XP

[Chris McMahan]

Sorry, I must apologize. I quickly cut and pasted my custom lisp
configuration code. I set up all of the servers and such in my .emacs,
and then reference the values throughout my configuration. This way, I
only have to change the settings in one file.

Thanks for the note! You are right, it's the gnus-select-method that's
used.

- Chris
 

notbob <notbob@nothome.com> writes:

> On 2008-02-26, Chris McMahan <first_initiallastname@one.dot.net> wrote:
>> What's preventing you from setting the server yourself, without
>> relying on the prompt?
>
>
>
>
>> (setq my_news_server "nntp.server.net")
>> (setq gnus-init-file (concat EMACS_PKGS "/.emacs-gnus"))
>
> I've not run across those particular lisp cmds.  I've used:
>
> (setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.somewhere.edu"))
>
> ...as indicated in sect 1.1 of the gnus manual and other sources.  I'll
> definitely give it a try.
>
>> If you're wondering about the .emacs file, the locations are dependent
>> on your HOME environment variable. Open the control Panel -> System ->
>> Advanced (tab) -> Environment Variables
>>
>> Add a HOME variable to your user settings with the appropriate value.
>
> I've been using C:\ as my home and it's been finding it, no problem.  I have
> other lisp settings like screen colors and highlighting there and they work
> just fine.  But, thank you for the Environment Variables tip.  I may try
> creating a NNTP=my.news.server variable and see how that works.
>
>> Launch emacs, and it will look there for your config files.  
>
>> Better yet, try looking up some of the documentation that involves
>> emacs on windows. A lot has been written on getting emacs running
>> successfully on all flavors of windows, and I've been happily using it
>> on everything from NT3.5 to XP for 10 years now, with gnus!
>
> I'm very happy for you.  I've read all I can find including the GNU Emacs
> FAQ for Windows, the utah.edu install, NYU, the gnus.org manuals,
> etc.  No help.
>
>> - http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/CategoryWThirtyTwo
>> - http://ourcomments.org/Emacs/EmacsW32.html
>
> Been there, read those.  I'm not ready to start using emacs variants, yet.
> Other than the gnus issue, emacs seems to be a pretty good option for me on
> XP.  
>
>> Also, on a personal note, it doesn't help your cause much when you
>> refer to your "suck XP box". Your issue here doesn't seem to be XP
>> related at all.
>
> There can be no doubt it's just my subjective opinion that XP sucks, but I
> stand by it.  As an M$ user since DOS, I've more than earned the right to
> dislike Windows as a product and everything M$ stands for.  And yes, this
> problem seems to be XP related entirely.  I have no problem with emacs/gnus
> on any *nix platforms.  They all work perfectly out of the box, unlike emacs
> for Windows.  But, I'll take the rap and keep trying because that's the way
> I am, stubborn.  I appreciate your response and I'll give your suggestion a
> try.  Thank you.
>
> nb

-- 
     (.   .)
  =ooO=(_)=Ooo=====================================
  Chris McMahan | first_initiallastname@one.dot.net
  =================================================