On Sun, 24 Feb 2013 03:24:46 +0000, Duncan wrote: > Christian posted on Sat, 23 Feb 2013 17:21:55 +0000 as excerpted: > >> Hi, >> >> I am new to Pan. I'm running Pan 0.139. I have tried to figure out how >> to have Pan check for and fetch new article headers every 30 minutes, >> but I can't figure out how. In other news readers I've used it's been >> pretty obvious how to set this, but in Pan it's either hidden or I am >> missing something obvious. Please let me know how I can set it so that >> Pan fetches new articles by time interval, in my case 30 minutes. > > This is interesting/distressing... > > For some time, pan has (well, had, see below...) the feature of being > able to download headers from the specified groups when given the > appropriate command line interface (CLI) option, and as with any self- > respecting Unix-based program, one was expected to simply setup a > cronjob from there, if scheduled activity was desired. The CLI option > was (based on the sources, which I just looked at) supposed to work like > this: > > pan headers:group.name1,another.group.name2,third.group.name3[,...] > > ... with the group names separated by commas if there was more than one. > There was (and remains) the --no-gui option, as well, to do it without > popping up the GUI. > > Unfortunately, somewhere along the line that feature apparently > bitrotted and no longer works (just tested, I get a segfault), at least > not with the 0.140-live-git-version I'm running, and based on your post, > I'd assume not with 0.139 as well. I don't remember anyone ever > bringing up the problem here (tho it might have been bugged, I didn't > check) and I hadn't done binaries at all for years until literally the > last week or two, and didn't actually use that CLI feature (like most I > guess I do mostly GUI) back when I did binaries, so I have absolutely NO > idea when the feature bitrotted, but I do remember people using either > that same feature or a very similar CLI-based-header-fetch feature many > years ago, so I'm sure it must have worked back then. > > But one of the coders (I'd guess either Heinrich or KHaley, depending on > when the problem was caught) apparently became aware of the problem, and > the --help output for the headers: option (and a couple others) is now > commented out, with the comment "Doesn't work yet." > > I'm almost positive the feature worked back half a decade ago or so when > Charles was still actively developing pan, so that "yet" in the comment, > instead of "currently broken" or similar, hints to me that the comment > was added sometime post-Charles-era, and that whoever added it wasn't > aware that it had worked in the past (assuming it did, but as I said, > I'm almost positive it did...). > > Which is all rather distressing to me, not only because of the broken > header-fetch functionality itself, but because of its impact on the > recently added "actions" feature, as well. One of the big issues with > pan, at least since the C++ rewrite, has been that it had a way to fetch > headers (aka overviews) from the command-line, and thus could be setup > in a cronjob or whatever for scheduled automatic header-fetches, but > that it had no way of auto-fetching bodies (actual posts) as well. The > "actions" > feature (see the actions tab of pan prefs) FINALLY allowed score-based- > auto-actions, including auto-cache and auto-save, and I thought with the > appropriate actions and/or score settings and an appropriate cronjob, > pan could FINALLY download both headers and bodies entirely unattended. > > Unfortunately, if the CLI-based header-downloading feature is broken, so > is the new actions feature, or at least a good part of the benefit it > was supposed to bring! And here I was thinking that since I was back > into binaries now, I might actually try out the feature! =:^( > > > Hopefully Heinrich will jump in here with some comments about what might > have gone wrong in the code and how easy it might be to fix, especially > since it's likely him that commented the corresponding --help output (if > I knew git a bit better I could use git blame to trace down exactly when > that was commented, and maybe look further back to see when it broke, > tho it might have been before pan switched to git from SVN, in which > case it might be a dead-end search...), and it'll likely be him > committing the fix. But if it was trivial to fix, I'm sure it'd have > been fixed instead of the associated --help output commented, so I'd > guess it's at least a bit beyond "trivial". =:^( OTOH, since the > comment /does/ say "yet", it's likely that whoever commented that output > never new it worked in the first place, so didn't know it was simply > broken and thought it had never been implemented at all, so it's quite > likely the overestimated the complexity of actually getting it working > (again). > > > This was my Friday so I do have the next couple days off, but I really > do need to do some house cleaning and other chores... If I have time, > however, or decide to be lazy and play on the computer rather than doing > the cleaning I really SHOULD be doing, since I do build pan from git > here and thus do have pan's git history back to when it was transferred > from SVN, anyway, I might look into it further. If I'm lucky, I'll find > the commit that broke it as well as the commit that added the comment, > which should definitely help in fixing the problem, and if I'm REALLY > lucky, it'll be obvious what went wrong in that commit, even to this > non-coder, and if I'm REALLY lucky, I'll even be able to come up with a > fix. > > We'll see... But I REALLY do need to spend at least one day cleaning > and doing laundry, etc, so who knows if I'll get to it at all, let alone > get lucky enough to find the problem and have it be something simple > enough I can actually fix. =:^( > > Of course, should anyone with the skills have the time to look into it > first and post a patch that I can simply apply and test... =:^) > > > Meanwhile... alternative that should be a functional workaround... > > Consider installing and running a local news server such as leafnode, > running on the localhost loopback interface (127.0.0.1 in IPv4, someday > I need to jump in and learn IPv6...). You can setup the server to do > the scheduled pulls, then set pan up to connect to the local server over > the localhost loopback.
Thank you for your detailed response and workaround. As a Pan newbie (I've done Usenet since 95) I find it odd that there's no built in functionality for timed fetching of new headers. So odd in fact I wonder if there's a reason for it? Now on to installing a news server! :) -- //christian _______________________________________________ Pan-users mailing list Pan-users@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pan-users
