On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 5:08 AM, Duncan <1i5t5.dun...@cox.net> wrote:
> > [The below comes across a bit strong. Please understand it's nothing > personal.] > No, I'm sorry about the HTML. Hopefully I've turned it off. Gmail uses kind of odd terminology. I use this email exclusively for about three list serves -- so it shouldn't have HTML. <SNIP> > First, how many connections do you have pan configured to use, and how > many do your servers allow? While you often want the four per server pan > allows in the GUI if you're doing binaries, for text groups only, as with > motzarella, two connections (or even one) should be fine. I've never > used motzarella myself, but I just checked and the web site says four > connections allowed, so that may be what you are using. Setting pan to > one or two might allow you to grab another allowed connection when it > times out -- provided pan knows it's timed out. (Are you getting an error > in pan's error log, or not? If so, pan knows it's timed out, otherwise, > it doesn't, and it's obviously trying to use a stale connection that's > timed out elsewhere.) As far as I know, I'm only using one connection at a time. I use two news groups, both text only. I'll have to check the error log (didn't even know to look there). Where would I look? And, it looks like I've already got Pan set to four connections -- I think that was the default. > Second, it'll be a bit of a chore to do it manually, but you can probably > use pan's offline feature to kill existing connections -- PROVIDED you do > it before whatever times them out. IOW, if you wait until after pan's > hanging, taking it offline's likely to hang as well due to the fact that > the TCP close connection packets will get as hung as the attempt to send > does, so you have to do it as soon as you stop actively using the > connection. I think there's a hotkey to toggle on/offline that should > make it easier. (I've long since made my own hotkey assignments here, > and nearly equally long since forgot what the defaults were for most > things, but IIRC it was L or maybe O.) You should then be able to wait > until you have a couple things ready to go if desired, and toggle it > online to do them, then back off. Doing it that way should close the > connection properly, allowing a new one to open properly when you need it. This sounds promising. I don't think it would be that big of a deal to type "L" when I'm about to write a longer response, then type "L" when I'm ready to post. I didn't even think about that. Thanks. Meanwhile, I have an educated guess at what the problem is. Are you > direct-connecting to your modem, or are you using a router (noting that > some modems have a built-in router)? The problem sounds to me very much > like a mis-configured NAPT that has WAY too short a timeout on inactive > TCP connections. That's very typical of some cheap crap-quality routers, > tho it's technically possible (but far less likely) to do it with a > firewall on a direct-connected computer. I'm using a Linksys router, and my computer is using a D-LINK wireless Ethernet adapter. This might be an issue, but it doesn't seem to give me trouble with other news readers. > FWIW, such connection timeouts are often a full 24 hours, tho in low- > resource many-dead-connections conditions something like an hour or two > (or really, anything longer than the server timeout, typically 15 minutes > as I mentioned up top) may be better, using less resources while long > enough to work. If you're correct in your time estimates and I'm correct > in my guess, your TCP idle connection timeout may be five minutes or > less, which, as you discovered, can be quite problematic. =:^( > > Thus, unless it's crap-quality routing/NAPT at your ISP (and if you're > behind NAPT at the ISP, they really /are/ crap!), I'd say odds strongly > favor you running a presently mis-configured router. Depending on what > brand, model, and most importantly firmware it is, there's some chance > the TCP timeout is configurable, and that'll fix it. Alternatively, > there may be a newer firmware available that will fix it. Another > alternative, provided it's a compatible router, would be upgrading to a > community based firmware such as OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato, etc, tho that's > a significantly bigger step as you're often voiding the warranty doing > something like that. > I'll look more into this. The Linksys router is running its newest available firmware. I don't see a TCP timeout setting. So let us know what sort of router you have, if any, and what firmware, > and /possibly/ someone here can help. You can also try the appropriate > equipment forums at broadbandreports.com (aka dslreports.com). They're > actually more likely to be of help with this sort of thing, as it's > really not a pan problem at that point, and some of those guys deal with > fixing that sort of problem on their respective hardware all the time. > Okay, thanks. The router is a Linksys WRT54G. My wireless network adapter is a D-Link G730AP. I really don't mind the offline/online option. But I'll report back if I find another solution -- and whether going offline/online option works. -- RonB -- Using CentOS 5.3
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