On 2013-07-15 20:57, JtWdyP wrote:
>
> It would appear that on Jul 14, Carlos E. R. did say:
>>> I also don’t want to deal with the {to me} horrid gui user interface I’ve found
>>> with any of the gui clients I’ve ever looked at.
>>
>> Well, I use alpine all the time, but I find the interface of the text
>> nntp clients I have tried awkward.
>
> As long as you don’t include alpine in your list of text nntp clients, I’d
> likely agree.
I do 
I could use the UI of alpine in news just fine - but their refusal to
cache the index and status of emails is an absolute unacceptable to me.
Yes, I did ask the devs about this.
> To me checking any subscribed newsgroups are part of what I think of as my
> email chores. I really like to use the same interface for read/compose
> on both…
Yes, me too, I use alpine for mail; I do want to use it for news, but it
is impossible. The idea of “deleting” posts that I have read is a no-no
(yes, that was what the alpine devs recommended to me). I want all posts
accessible so that I can go back and read the entire thread tomorrow or
next month. And I also want to keep track of what I read already.
Just because of that fault, I turned to Thunderbird for nntp, with the
consequence that I also use it for email sometimes, to the detriment of
Alpine 
(the other two text nntp readers I know of, are slrn and tin)
>> It is not a “true” news spool, it is rather a news proxy.
>
> Not sure I understand the difference… But I see references to something
> called fetchnews…
>
> I use a script to retrieve most of my email via fetchmail using procmail as an
> mda… would you describe that as a mail proxy?
Ok, let me try to describe.
Fetchnews pulls news from a real nntp server, and pushes to it new posts
to be sent. When you run it the first time, it just downloads the list
of groups.
When you try to view any group, with alpine, say, it will just display a
single faked message saying that the group is yet empty, but that it
will be retrieved shortly.
The next time that fetchnews runs, it downloads those groups that you
touched. And, conversely, if you stop reading a group for some time, it
will stop downloading it. Eventually, as groups are purged periodically
of old posts, that group will be empty again.
It is a proxy, because you can not create groups, nor have them
transferred to other servers. It is a “leaf” of a real server, a
“slave”. You choose the name 
Also it is a proxy because you can place it at the entry point of a
computer room, so that everybody connects to the news proxy instead of
the “real” server somewhere, reducing load on that server.
>> It is little work, and once done, it is blazingly fast, posts light up
>> (even on alpine) in a split second. With nntp.opensuse.org I can count
>> the seconds sometimes.
>
> So you can use alpine with it… What about posting a message composed in
> alpine?? Is it as simple as selecting the local news spool in the .pinerc
> and then putting the appropriate newsgroup name in the message header?
Absolutely.
>
>> Look, this is my entire config:
>>
>>
>> cer@Telcontar:~> cat /etc/leafnode/config | egrep -v "^:space:]]*$|^#"
>> expire = 400
>> server = nntp.opensuse.org
>> server = nntp.novell.com
>> timeout = 30
>> groupexpire opensuse.org.help.howto = -1
>> groupexpire opensuse.org.help.howto.submissions = -1
>> groupexpire opensuse.org.* = 600
>> initialfetch = 1000
>> debugmode = 1
>> maxage = 0
>> maxbytes = 500000
>> timeout_long = 60
>> allow_8bit_headers = 1
>> cer@Telcontar:~>
>>
Do you really think /that/ is difficult? 
Not exactly… But figuring out what to put there might be.
Take the above as a guide - there is a sample config which I altered. As
you see, I have defined two nntp servers, with the idea that if one
fails the other may be active. It works.
But using your file as a guide, it looks like the one config can manage news
retrieval & expiration of newsgroups on more than one server?
Yes! If the groups match, when it tries to download from the second
server it sees that the posts have already been downloaded and skips them.
And, if the groups do not match (not the case here) then you have a
joined list of groups and it will automatically download and send to the
right one.
IE it could take care of BOTH nntp.opensuse.org AND news.gmane.org for me?
Yes, I believe it would. I have not tried news.gmane.org myself, but it
should.
I notice you define groupexpire details for only 3 groups. Does that mean that
your leafnode doesn’t fetch articles from:
opensuse.org.help.hardware.64-bit
for example??
No, it means that I have different settings for those 2. The rest use
default settings (the ‘*’). It means that I do not expire howto posts.
The rest expire in 600 days, almost two years, which is a lot 
I subscribe to only a few groups on any one news server, And wouldn’t want to
waste time or filespace on the ones I’m not currently interested in.
Correct, that’s automated.
Notice that if you keep subscribed to a group in thunderbird, as
thunderbird scans those for new posts, to display the number of new
posts on each, it means that those groups are downloaded for ever. With
thunderbird you have to unsubscribe from those groups you do not want,
and after a period of… I think it is 600 days (!) in my case.
Not sure of that, though. There may be a different setting for purging
mails and for fetching posts from a non-touched group. I could not
locate that setting if it exists, in a brief reading just now.
The only snag is that it uses one file per post, and that’s a huge lot
of inodes - thus I make sure that /var/spool/news is on reiserfs.
I’ve never tried reisefs. Does it take anything more than using the right
fs info in /etc/fstab to get ANY linux distro to mount, read, and write to it
properly???
Well, you need to create it first, obviously 
The fstab entry for me is:
> LABEL=c_home_mail /home1 reiserfs acl,user_xattr,barrier=flush 1 2
But it could as well be “defaults”. Also I have:
> Telcontar:~ # l /var/spool/news lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 Sep 25 2010 /var/spool/news -> /home1/var_spool_news/
Note that it will work on any filesystem; but if you look at the
ext2/3/4 manual, you will see …] No, you don’t. That is, I can not
find it. Years ago there was a setting when creating a filesystem to
specify that you wanted it for ‘news’ and the filesystem would have a
lot of inodes and smaller chunks.
I would use xfs if reiser is not a possibility, and if not, ext4, but
adjusting for that usage. I would have to hink of the exact settings.
> Is there any reason the reisefs partition mounted on /var/spool/news couldn’t
> be on an external usb drive??
Only speed.
Well, do not use a flash system, either; use a magnetic disk, IMO,
because it would trash (wear) a lot. Many small writes.
>> Then you need a cronjob to do the hard work:
>
> I never got used to using cronjobs for anything. I never know when my computer
> will be on, nor which Linux installation it will be running when it is.
No problem. You just have the cronjob defined, and if the computer is
off, it does not run 
> But “need” is a funny word. Many Linux users seem to think fetchmail
> needs to run automatically… But the very first time it ever runs on my
> system when I hadn’t just explicitly called it on the command line, I’ll
> be removing fetchmail from my system. I’d feel the same way about the
> fetchnews command. I mean I wouldn’t want it to run while the drive with
> the reisefs partition was attached to the other computer…
Ok, you can run it manually 
I did have it manually for a time, till I noticed that I forgot to call
it. You see, if you do not call it, the posts you write are not sent.
> Can it be configured to fetch and or expire news ONLY upon command? And never
> ever automatically do either? And if I didn’t use a cronjob, would there be a
> way to command pending posts to upload to the news servers?
Expire is a cronjob installed from the rpm, don’t worry about it.
“fetchnews” is the command used to pull and push posts.
Try it… if you do not like it, remove it 
It was invented when people used modems, because it reduced real
traffic, and you could read posts without connection. But even nowdays
it has its uses. I use it because browsing the posts is very fast, I
don’t have to wait for the post to arrive here.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)