Re: [Pan-users] How to fix "Unable to save ... Permission denied"?

[Duncan]

Beartooth posted on Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:58:17 +0000 as excerpted:

> On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:42:59 +0000, Beartooth wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 01:00:33 +0000, Duncan wrote:
>> 
>>> Those paths are almost certainly to be found in what is now
>>> /home/bttth/.pan2/servers.xml (but was previously btth...)
>>> 
>>> That's an xml-based file, so be careful when editing it not to disturb
>>> the format, but you should be fine if you simply search and replace
>>> for btth, adding the extra "t" to make it bttth, and make no other
>>> changes.
>> 
>>      That got most of it, thanks! I think I messed up my Giganews
>> userid; but Gmane seems to be working again, and that's the main thing.
> 
>       Uurrrkkkk! I spoke too soon. Even from servers like news.grc.com
> and news.opera.no I get the miserable giganews whine. Should Pan really
> be going to those by way of giganews??

Here's the deal.  Pan uses standard newsrc style files for keeping track 
of subscribed groups, messages already seen, etc.  All fine and good but 
for one problem: the newsrc format assumes a single news server only!

Pan is of course multi-server, so it must use multiple newsrc files.  By 
default these are named newsrc-1, newsrc-2, etc, based on the order you 
setup the servers.

Meanwhile, pan stores its server information, including a mapping of 
which newsrc file corresponds to which server along with the address for 
each server, associated username and password if any, per-server article 
expiration policy, server rank (normal or backup), etc, in servers.xml.

What apparently happened is that somehow, when you edited servers.xml to 
change the path from btth to bttth, you changed some of the other 
information in servers.xml as well.  Either that or the mapping of newsrc 
files to server got screwed up, somehow -- maybe you created them in a 
different order in the new location so newsrc-1 (for instance) is gmane's 
newsrc file in the old location, but giganew's newsrc file in the new one.


There's two alternatives for fixing things.

1) Delete all newsrc files along with the servers.xml file, starting over 
with a new server configuration.  In addition to having to reconfigure 
each server with address, username, etc, you'll lose track of which 
groups you had subscribed and which messages were read and which haven't 
been, so you'll have to resubscribe your groups and download headers and 
mark some messages read again, that you've already seen.

This involves some work, but since you delete the affected files and 
reconfigure the data in them, the chance of screwing anything else up is 
much smaller.

2) You can try to hand-edit servers.xml, possibly by copying over a 
backup version, being more careful this time to edit /only/ the btth 
string, changing it to bttth.

Depending on how you setup the new location, it's also possible that 
you'll have to open the newsrc files and sort out which one belongs to 
which server, editing the filenames in servers.xml to point to the 
correct ones.

This is what I'd do here, but it has the possibility of further screwing 
up pan if you get it wrong.  Given previous history, I'd recommend that 
you stick with option 1 as it involves more work, but is the safer option 
with less that can go wrong, since you're not hand editing files but 
rather using the pan GUI to re-setup your servers, subscribed groups, etc.

-- 
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