[Pan-users] Re: Switched servers, now new messages appear as read

[Duncan]

Thufir <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Tue, 04 Mar 2008 09:23:06
+0000:

> On Mon, 03 Mar 2008 11:47:09 +0000, Duncan wrote:
> 
>> The newsrc files, which track messages by xref (server specific)
>> number. All the files in groups do is act as a threading and overview
>> cache.
>> 
>> It's the newsrc files that actually track messages per server.
> 
> 
> Where's this file located?
> 
> Can it simply be deleted and then pan will regenerate it?

${PAN_HOME}/ (which defaults to ~/.pan2, if the variable hasn't been set 
in the environment).  There will be one for each configured server, named 
newsrc-1, newsrc-2, etc, by default.

If you have >1 server configured, servers.xml holds the server 
configuration, including the correspondence between server and newsrc 
file.  If you wish, you can therefore rename the newsrc files to 
something more descriptive (I have gmane.newsrc for instance, for gmane's 
newsrc file) and set the entry in servers.xml accordingly (with pan shut 
down, of course).

You can indeed delete the files (with pan closed, naturally) and pan 
should regenerate them, but they track a number of things, including (I 
think) the lists of groups for that server and which ones you had 
subscribed, so if you delete it, you'll need to redownload the group list 
and resubscribe.

Looking, there's also the newsgroups.xov file.  You may need to delete or 
edit this one as well.  While the newsrc files track read vs. unread, the 
xov file tracks global group totals and per-server high-water-mark -- the 
highest xref number seen for the group, per server.  At least, that's 
what a quick peek inside seems to reveal.

As I mentioned, the files in the groups subdir mainly store threading and 
display information (caching the most frequently used author names, for 
instance, so pan can refer to them with a shorter index number rather 
than the full author name for each one, thereby saving memory).  This 
information can be rebuilt if necessary, altho pan may take rather longer 
to start if like me you've a rather larger cache and don't expire your 
text groups, thus accumulating quite a database worth of messages that 
pan will have to rethread if you delete its threading info as held in the 
files in the groups subdir.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman