[Pan-users] Re: Switching between servers

[Duncan]

lamprez <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Fri, 07 Sep 2007 22:29:01
+0000:

> I have my servers list 3 providers.
> I would like to define from whitch server Pan will download headers list
> in my subscribed groups.
> 
> How can I do this in Pan ???
> 
> 
> PS. I try to say more cleary; i have 3 providers (nntp.ipartners.pl,
> nttp.atman.pl and gmane); now, i would like to subscribed some group
> (alt.pl.*) and define that nntp.ipartens.pl shopuld send mi headers list
> for this group. How can I do this in Pan ???

pan >0.90 normally downloads headers from all servers carrying the group, 
then starts grabbing messages as they are available.  Thus, servers that 
don't have good message completion will skip ahead and be done first, 
leaving the server with full message completion to continue downloading 
until they are done.  Of course this is modified by the number of 
connections and allowed speed on each server.

Sometime later, perhaps around 0.100 or 0.115, Charles added the backup 
server setup.  I believe it still downloads overviews (wrongly aka 
headers, wrongly because only a few specific headers are included), as it 
uses that to figure out which servers contain what.  However, it won't 
download the actual messages until it checks all the others first.

Note that while the GUI settings only have main and backup, two tiers, if 
with pan shut down you edit servers.xml, you can set as many tiers as you 
wish up to the number of servers you have.  That'll cause pan to check 
them in sequence and only go to the next one if the previous one didn't 
have the message.

There has been talk, altho I don't believe it has been implemented, of 
allowing one to temporarily suspend a server, say when one's quota is 
used up for the month, by setting its connection count to zero.  That 
would temporarily disable it, without requiring that it be removed from 
the server config.

The only way I believe it's possible to download messages from a server 
without downloading overviews first, is to use *.nzb files.  You can 
either download these from whatever sources, or you can create them 
yourself, using pan itself.  The process, outlined below, is admittedly a 
bit indirect, but it should work, if your motivation is strong enough to 
go thru the hassle.  Otherwise, as I said, just use other sources, paying 
for them if necessary.

To create nzb files yourself, you'd use pan's multi-instance capability.  
pan looks to the PAN_HOME environmental variable if set, to see where it 
should look for its config and data files.  Thus, it's possible to run 
different pan instances, complete with their own separate configs, by 
setting up different pan home dirs instead of using the default ~/.pan2.  
Here, I use ~/pan as a parent dir for the various instance subdirs, text, 
test, bin, with a fourth dir, globals, that contains config files (such 
as accels.txt and score) that are common to all instances.  I then 
symlink the global files from the individual instances as desired.  I 
then have a pan launcher script for each of my instances that sets the 
PAN_HOME environmental var (among others) as appropriate, and have 
desktop/menu entries pointing to each of these scripts, so I can launch 
them individually from my main desktop menu (kmenu as I use KDE), or more 
likely, from my hotkey app-launcher (khotkeys, of course).

For your usage, you'd have one instance set to download headers (only), 
and only containing the servers from which you want to do so.  Once you 
had your headers, you'd set it offline, and setup a download -- which it 
won't do because it's offline.  You'd then switch to your real 
downloading instance, configured with the servers you want to download 
from, and use the import nzb files (under the file menu) option to grab 
the tasks.nzb task list from the first instance.  (You may have to switch 
groups or shut down the first instance to get it to write out the nzb, 
I've never used nzbs except as auto-generated so can't rightly say.)  
After the nzb is imported, you should be able to cancel the held-up 
download in the first instance, and setup another one.

-- 
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