Re: [Pan-users] Pan-users Digest, Vol 233, Issue 2

[Dieter Britz]

Hi Duncan

thanks for the suggestion.  Does "reconfigure from scratch" mean
removing and re-installing pan? After, of course, erasing all those
files.
The strange thing is, that I have pan on two laptops, one at work
and one at home, and pan stopped working on both at about the
same time.

Dieter

On Mon, 2 Jan 2023 at 18:02, <pan-users-request@nongnu.org> wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. Re: Pan not working (Sarah Taylor)
>    2. Re: Pan not working (Duncan)
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2023 14:37:32 -0400
> From: Sarah Taylor <sarah997744@gmail.com>
> To: pan-users@nongnu.org
> Subject: Re: [Pan-users] Pan not working
> Message-ID:
>         <CAAf8wBXHE2isWGt1YZzhSfONn84fzbNgA=bvbCvDFVtenkZqvw@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Do you have any newsgroups working at all?
>
> I have noticed something similar, but it looks to me like there is no
> activity on a variety of newsgroups. On the other hand, there are a few
> newsgroups I look at that do seem to be working, therefore I thought
> (think?) that the problem is not Pan but with the newsgroups themselves.
>
> Sarah
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 1, 2023 at 10:08 AM Dieter Britz <dieterhansbritz@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I have used Pan for years on my Ubuntu and Kubuntu laptops,
> > but from a few months ago it stopped working - no newsgroups.
> > If I subscribe to one, it seems to enter it in the list of groups but
> > when I click on it, nothing happens, see the screenshot.
> >
> > I use eternal-september.org as the news server and am a
> > subscriber - it all worked fine before until it died.
> >
> > What can be going on here? How do I get back on?
> >
> > Dieter
> > _______________________________________________
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> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2023 06:37:59 -0000 (UTC)
> From: Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>
> To: pan-users@nongnu.org
> Subject: Re: [Pan-users] Pan not working
> Message-ID: <pan$d436b$ece4f161$c95999$442f3ec2@cox.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Dieter Britz posted on Sun, 1 Jan 2023 15:07:56 +0100 as excerpted:
>
> > I have used Pan for years on my Ubuntu and Kubuntu laptops,
> > but from a few months ago it stopped working - no newsgroups.
> > If I subscribe to one, it seems to enter it in the list of groups but
> > when I click on it, nothing happens, see the screenshot.
> >
> > I use eternal-september.org as the news server and am a subscriber - it
> > all worked fine before until it died.
> >
> > What can be going on here? How do I get back on?
>
> So based on the screenshot, the newsgroups are still listed, but all under
> "other groups", none subscribed.  And from your description, attempting to
> subscribe a group seems to do so (presumably it's listed under subscribed
> groups for that session), but clicking on it does nothing, and ...
> implied ... quitting and restarting pan eliminates it from the subscribed
> groups list, again putting it under other groups.  Accurate description?
>
> That sounds very much like a corrupted file, likely either the newsrc file
> (if there's more than one, servers.xml contains a server to newsrc map
> among its other settings) or newsgroups.xov.  These and other pan files
> are normally found in pan's data dir, which is IIRC ~/.pan2 by default (if
> the $PAN_HOME environmental var isn't set, which it has been for it must
> be nearing two decades here, thus the "IIRC" qualifier).
>
> Before you start with pan's config it's a good idea to run (in a terminal)
> a smartctl -AH on the drive containing that dir as well as an an fsck on
> the partition, to ensure the drive and filesystem are in good health.
>
> Assuming that doesn't find bigger problems, if you don't care about losing
> pan's config, state and cache, you can of course just delete the entire
> dir and reconfigure from scratch, and the problem will likely be gone.
>
> But I never want to lose all that, plus I always want to figure out as far
> as possible what went wrong so as to be better prepared if it happens
> again, so I'd be more likely to back up the dir and delete/restore files/
> subdirs (with pan shut down each time I change what's there so it doesn't
> rewrite corrupt data) until I find the file that's causing the problem.
> Then I'll examine the file in a text editor (pan's config is text-based)
> to see if I can tell what happened and possibly delete or edit only the
> bad part, keeping in mind of course that I already made a backup that's
> easy enough to restore and try again if I screw something up.
>
> --
> 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
>
>
>
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> End of Pan-users Digest, Vol 233, Issue 2
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