Thanx for the explanation. Where did I 'accidently' ask to save the 'text' messages too ?
Thx W On Thursday 24 April 2008 18:01:25 Duncan wrote: > Travis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> posted > [EMAIL PROTECTED], excerpted below, on Thu, 24 > > Apr 2008 06:57:44 -0700: > > ----- Original Message ----- > > > >> I run pan version 0.132. > >> > >> When I download a multipart message from news.usenetserver.com I get a > >> lot of files with names like : > >> > >> M8WPj.14920$HY2.13951-epkf52SaZeZP2roSf1MJ43itZ/ > >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >> > >> I got other extension too (so not only with usenetserver.com.msg). > > > > You have Pan set to save "text" as well as the attachments. > > Travis is correct, depending on where you are looking, but here's a > somewhat more detailed explanation. > > Pan saves messages using the (sanitized to filesystem safe) Message-ID, > which according to the RFCs should be globally unique -- there should > never be two different messages anywhere in the world at any time with > the same Message-ID. > > Different news clients (and original posting servers, if the news client > doesn't supply its own) use different algorithms to come up with the > Message-ID, however. Many use some form of a combination of from address > (either the poster's, or the posting server's) to hopefully keep > collisions in "space" from occurring, timestamp, to keep collisions in > time from occurring, and random number, just in case, but it's up to the > implementation exactly what they use, as long as it's unique. > > That's why the message files appear to have such strange names -- they > are based on the Message-ID, which isn't standardized except in the > characters it may contain and that it must be unique, and isn't really > designed for file-naming, the use to which pan puts it. Pan uses the > Message-ID as a filename, however, in ordered to help keep things > straight, since it's unique to the message and pan is designed to be able > to track and know when it has already downloaded the same message across > multiple servers. (The other form of message numbering, normally > sequential by group, is server-specific, and therefore won't help > tracking messages between servers.) > > All that said, normally, the only place these filenames appear is in > pan's cache, which by default is pretty small, 10 MB. (The cache can be > set larger manually, by editing preferences.xml in pan's settings dir > directly. I run a multi-gigabyte cache, save to cache, and then sort and > save off messages from there after they are all stored in local cache.) > Since pan handles its cache automatically, you'll not normally see these > files unless you go manually trawling thru the cache. > > However, if as Travis suggested, if you tell pan to save the text message > itself, not just attachments, it'll save this more or less raw text > message. This is nice if you want to save a text message, tho you may > want to rename it to something more appropriate (say the subject) > afterward. I do this from time to time. It's also useful on "broken" > attachments that pan can't properly save on its own, however, as it may > be possible to recover the attachment using other tools designed to deal > for the purpose. I do this too, occasionally. > > So basically, if you are telling pan to save the text message not just > the attachments, you'll get these wherever you have pan saving its > messages. Tell it to save attachments only, and you'll not have to worry > about them. Or, if you are examining pan's cache, don't worry about it, > as pan should manage them on its own unless you've deliberately set it up > to handle manually, as I have. _______________________________________________ Pan-users mailing list Pan-users@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pan-users
