Re: Ping Mike Mocha

On Fri, 28 Jun 2024 20:11:29 +0200, PX wrote:

> On Fri, 28 Jun 24 06:31:59 UTC, Mike Mocha wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, 15 Jun 2024 23:57:23 +0200, PX wrote:
>> 
>>> Hey Mike, you accidentally created a group. You made a post to this
>>> group on April 10th but you put the group as alt.comics.classics
>>> instead of alt.comics.classic. If you post to a group that doesn't
>>> exist on some backbones, the backbone will create that group. I did
>>> this several years ago but haven't been able to do it again and I
>>> found out my provider had switched backbones so it didn't work any
>>> more. I saw that you used Blocknews to post and the weird thing is
>>> that the new backbone they're using will create the group and post to
>>> it but won't carry it in their newsgroup list. The same applies to the
>>> Usenet Express backbone. These groups and posts can be accessed from
>>> the Abavia backbone. Abavia will create the group and fully support it
>>> and there are a number of groups that are only accessible from Abavia.
>>> That might be why there are a lot of deals that include an extra block
>>> on the Abavia backbone. I got a couple of them and all of a sudden, I
>>> am finding new posts on groups that I thought were dead. I can post to
>>> them from from Blocknews or Newsgroup direct but only Abavia can
>>> access the posts. So I got a cheap Abavia subscription so I can both
>>> post and read the posts from one provider.
>>> 
>>> And a side note about Blocknews. They were kicked of the Omicron
>>> backbone a few month's ago and since then, not only is the deep
>>> Omicron retention gone, it was causing Pan to freeze. I do custom
>>> builds of Pan these days and I at first thought it was some of the
>>> code mods I'd made but it ended up being Blocknews. I'd kept my block
>>> accounts in reserve with zero threads so I had a backup for accessing
>>> old posts but when they switched backbones, I thought I might as well
>>> use them up and Blocknews has always allowed posting. It turns out
>>> there's something in the new backbone that Pan was having issues with.
>>> It might be that I'd used it with the old backbone and it was trying
>>> to access files that the new backbone didn't have, I'm not sure but I
>>> when I disabled Blocknews again, the freezing stopped. Anyway, if you
>>> get an Abavia block, you'll be able to see the post you made on April
>>> 10th in alt.comics.classics and my reply to it.
>> 
>> Hey PX! That's hilarious! I've been trying to create groups for 30
>> years and now I did it accidentally! I was just reading your other
>> recent posts here. I was hoping to find those paradox groups you made
>> but like you said it seems to be hidden to Abavia. Sometimes I get
>> freezes with Pan but I think it's also attributed to some unstable
>> code, at least there are a number of bug reports about freezing but the
>> main developer claims to be unable to reproduce it with the servers he
>> uses.
>> 
>> How do you know all this info about USENET backbone and the providers?
>> Is there some site that keeps track of where NNTP traffic comes from or
>> something?
> 
> I figured out the freezing issue. When Blocknews changed backbones there
> were a lot of groups missing on the new backbone and when Pan tried to
> access them, it froze. The solution is to delete the newsrc file for
> Blocknews and go to the groups menu and do a "refresh groups list" so
> the a new newssrc file gets created with only the groups Blocknews
> actually caries on it. Just doing a group refresh without deleting the
> old file will just append any new groups to the old list and won't work.
> If you have more than one server in Pan, you can check which newsrc file
> corresponds to which server in the servers.xml file. All of these files
> are located in the .pan2 folder located in your user folder. It's a
> hidden file so you have to enable viewing hidden files to see it. It's
> probably a good idea to delete all the newsrc files every now and then
> and refresh the group list. I have a total of 20 servers in Pan right
> now covering all the major and minor backbones except Usenet Farm
> because they list parts as individual headers and mess up my indexes and
> Giganews because they don't sell blocks and their subscriptions are too
> expensive.
> 
> There are a lot of pages about backbones. This one lets you check out
> which backbone a provider is using.
> 
> https://whatsmyuse.net/
> 
> The reddit provider map is also a good source.
> 
> https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/wiki/providers/
> 
> A backbone, as I understand it, is basically a group of NNTP servers all
> running the same code with the same configuration carrying the same
> groups peered to each other.

Hey PX, I just tried this tip about the newsrc file, thanks. I'll let you 
know if Pan seems more stable. Hey, what was the first access you had to 
USENET? Was it at University?