Re: [Pan-users] Port 119 blocked - no newsgroup access!

[Duncan]

Maurice posted on Thu, 21 May 2015 12:51:17 +0000 as excerpted:

> Last week I was in a French (Aix-en-Provence) hotel whose WiFi access
> was blocking Port 119, so could not use Pan to access newsgroups.
> 
> Is there an alternative port I could have used, or any other workaround?

It depends on your news servers, which you didn't mention.

Pan connects to news servers like a web browser connects to web servers, 
and while there's a default http/web port (80) and a default nntp/news 
port (119), as well as their secure protocol alternative defaults (443 
https, 563 nntps), servers can listen on non-default ports if they are 
configured by their admins to do so, and in fact, in an effort to better 
serve their customers, many news providers specifically configure their 
servers to listen on non-default ports precisely /because/ the default 
ports are often blocked.  These news providers will normally provide 
information about what ports can be used to reach them, on their web site.


Since from your headers you appear to have posted via gmane, I can at 
least tell you that gmane supports nntps on its default port 563, as well 
as nntp on its default port 119.

Pan itself supports secure connections as well, tho I run pan built from 
live-git (with my current build's commit ID being visible in my user-
agent headers with every post... and I tend to update every 1-10 days so 
it won't get /too/ far outdated) and 0.139's release was far enough back 
I don't remember if any nntps specific bugs have been fixed since then or 
not.

So for gmane at least, had you switched pan's gmane server config to 
secure, it would have automatically switched the default port to 563, the 
default nntps port, and you could have tried that.  Tho being a well 
known port that corresponds to the secure version of a protocol it was 
already blocking the plain-text default port for, it may well have 
blocked that as well.

Whether gmane news is available on other ports in either secure or plain-
text form, I don't know, tho in general two other popular ports to try, 
in both secure and unsecure form, would be the default http port 80, and 
default https port 443.  Since those are the default plain-text and 
secure http ports, they are less frequently blocked than others, and as 
such, many news providers choose to serve on those ports too, for their 
users who are unable to connect in other ways.  Whether gmane serves news 
on those ports or not, tho, I don't know...

Finally, if worse comes to worse and you can't connect to gmane via news, 
secure or plain-text, on any port you try, you can of course break out 
the web browser and try gmane's web interface.  While for those used to 
news it's not as convenient as the news interface, it's usable in a 
pinch, and when someone on my ISP and apparently in the same IP netblock 
was apparently spamming or otherwise abusing gmane some years ago, so it 
blocked news access for me too, I was able to at least keep up with 
current posts in my groups via the gmane web interface, tho as I said 
it's inconvenient enough (not tracking read articles, etc), I'd 
definitely not choose it as a routine basis solution.  But for an 
emergency connect for just a few days, it does work.

For other news providers... well, check their web page.  But as I said, 
most providers, particularly commercial providers you pay for the 
privilege, have a variety of alternative ports you can connect to, 
because since you're playing, it's in their interest to make it as easy 
for you to connect and use the service, and thus /keep/ paying, as 
possible. =:^)

> (Hoping for an early solution I tried to post problem last week on Pan
> mailing-list, but was told:
> 
> "You are not allowed to post to this mailing list, and your message has
> been automatically rejected.  If you think that your messages are being
> rejected in error, contact the mailing list owner at
> address@hidden"
>   Tried emailing list owner but no reply!)

Well, you reached the pan mailing list this time. =:^)

Given your headers (including the user-agent header, which indicates pan, 
along with the version), it appears you posted to the pan "newsgroup" on 
gmane, which of course is a newsgroup<>mailinglist gateway, taking 
messages from a mailinglist and publishing them as a newsgroup (as well 
as as a web forum, via the gmane web interface), and relaying messages 
posted to the newsgroup back to the mailing list for further processing 
and possible publishing via the mailinglist, which would of course result 
in gmane getting a copy since it subscribes to the mailinglist, which it 
would then publish as it does other messages it receives from the 
mailinglist.

But thru gmane or independently, it went thru this time, while it didn't 
when you tried previously.  Why I can't say, without seeing the rejection 
in full, and possibly not even then.  It could be because you tried 
posting from a different email address previously, or because your mail 
client defaults to HTML and otherwise posts spammy looking messages while 
pan of course posts in plain text only, or if you're not a subscriber to 
the mailing list itself (FWIW I am, but in "vacation mode", so it doesn't 
mail me directly, since I read and reply to posts via gmane) perhaps the 
listserv /might/ /be/ configured with an exception that's more liberal 
with non-member posts to the list if posted thru gmane, than it is when 
not (lest there be any doubt, I've no idea whether such an exception is 
configured or not, it's just one more possible reason among many...), 
or...

-- 
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