Please help with Agent

HI Eric, I use Agent as well, but only for music, pictures, or video groups. For this group, and groups like this, basically a text format, I like to use Outlook express.

Works for me,

Randy Hansen SC Glass Tech Scam Diego, Comi-fornia

???? Agent is text based while Outleak Exploder is primarily HTML based.

But..according to your headers..you are indeed using the script kiddies favorite target.

Gunner

No 220-pound thug can threaten the well-being or dignity of a 110-pound woman who has two pounds of iron to even things out. Is that evil? Is that wrong? People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for the rule of brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically "right". Guns end that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work. - L. Neil Smith

My box was doing that quite regularly a couple weeks back, but seems to have gone back to normal now. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

So aren't I. And yet...

Tim

-- "I've got more trophies than Wayne Gretsky and the Pope combined!" - Homer Simpson Website @

Want me to send you a nice bit or three of malevil code and see how your security handles it?

Gunner

No 220-pound thug can threaten the well-being or dignity of a 110-pound woman who has two pounds of iron to even things out. Is that evil? Is that wrong? People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for the rule of brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically "right". Guns end that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work. - L. Neil Smith

Are you sure it isn't your news server's problem? Your ISP could have lost it's newsfeed for some reason. Try using Outlook to see if you get any that way.

On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 16:52:01 -0700, Eric R Snow vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:

remove ns from my header address to reply via email

This sounds very like an ISP problem.

Has this always happened? Or is it recent?

I have had that from time to time, and have actually once changed ISP because of it. My change was proved correct. They went belly up.

Talk to your ISP. However, many of them tell you it's your fault if they are not honest, because NGs are a poor source of POPularity to them.

For some reason, IME, they are plugging the subscribed style NGs/forums.

I have been told to purge NGs etc etc. I have NEVER found Agent to be at fault. I use Free Agent. Same engine, less fringes.

In the end, if you try all their tricks and still have trouble change ISPs ( :-< ). Or at least check the share value of the one you use . DAMHIKT.

BTW, some ISPs do not serve less popular NGs. They may start to, then drop them. Depending on circumstances, y9ou may not know about the "change of plan". Try refreshing the NG list, and see if the faulty NGs are still there.

etc etc.

***************************************************** Marriage. Where two people decide to get together so that neither of them can do what they want to because of the other one.

You sure that you haven't got group->view messages-> (something silly) set? (it's happened to me before)

posted and emailed

Mark Rand RTFM

One possibility is that the news spool disk crashed. (This is the disk partition on which the news articles are stored.)

As far as I know, *nobody* bothers to back up the news spool, as it changes so rapidly. And backups of the configuration files are relatively infrequent.

Each article is stored as a separate file in a subdirectory matching the name of the newsgroup. As an example, rec.crafts.metalworking would be stored in

/usr/local/news/spool/rec/crafts/metalworking

(the first four entries remain constant on a given system, and only the later ones change to represent the newsgroup.)

Each article is a file whose name is a number. At present, the past 28 days in rec.crafts.metalworking on my server range from 539493 (Jun 24 03:33) through 551183 (Aug 25 18:23). Each new article added has the next number.

If the news server crashes, it is possible for the file containing the current article numbers (called the "active" file). Here is the line for rec.crafts.metalworking in my news server.

rec.crafts.metalworking 000000551184 000000539493 y

If the drive containing the server database, including the "active" file crashed, it would be replaced by an older copy -- just how old is a function of the backup frequency.

If the active file is replace by an older one, it will start re-using already-used names for the files, and your newsreader will think that you have already read those, so it will see no "new" articles.

The solution in unix is to edit the ".newsrc" file in your home directory to change the line which starts with:

"rec.crafts.metalworking: "

and is followed by some list of numbers, so it only contains:

"rec.crafts.metalworking: "

with no following numbers -- though with a space after the ':'.

On various Windows newsreaders, the easiest way to reset the numbers (as far as I know) is to unsubscribe from the newsgroup, exit your newsreader (so it forgets all that it had in there), and then restart the program and re-subscribe to the newsgroup.

Of course, it also could be that your ISP has decided to drop all news serving -- or just specific newsgroups. In the latter case, a complaint or several may get it reinstated. There are *tons* of newsgroups which *nobody* reads, and it takes tons of disk space to hold only a single day's feed. I have a very limited feed (only the newsgroups which I want, or a couple of friends want), and as a result, I can set the expire time for mine to 28 days. If I carried even a fraction of the whole feed, I could not afford enough disk space for a single day's feed, let alone to hold nearly a month for newsgroups of special interest.

FWIW -- the number which an article gets is unique to the news sever on which you are viewing it, and is almost certainly different on every other news server.

Enjoy, DoN.

On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 16:52:01 -0700, Eric R Snow calmly ranted:

Try clicking Online/Sample Headers and setting it for

48 hours. If it still doesn't pick up any messages, check with your news host. Maybe their server went down for a bit.

- Inside every older person is a younger person wondering WTF happened. ---

Website Application Programming

I'm sure I would, I've seen all the popular viruses in my mailbox and pffbt...nothing. Of course, nowadays it probably wouldn't even get to me since Charter started filtering spam and viruses!

Tim (boy, filtered spam, OE that works, cable internet... no wonder everyone here hates me :_)

-- "I've got more trophies than Wayne Gretsky and the Pope combined!" - Homer Simpson Website @

Another nice thing about my connection. Supernews carries some 40k groups (was 33k or so last time I downloaded the list, IIRC) and even on binaries, retention is like...*months*. :o

Tim

-- "I've got more trophies than Wayne Gretsky and the Pope combined!" - Homer Simpson Website @

I had trouble switching to cable , it took a couple of calls to get them to admit their news part was real slow. I waited about 4 days and then called saying something to the effect that I guess I made a mistake by switching and it was up to full speed in a couple of hours.

Agent off line NG has helped me a number of times , + Gunner who got me hooked on Agent. Works great for email also.

If only it wouldn't load up headers so fast that you can't see how many there are.

Ok. Ill find something nice and nasty for you.

Gunner

"In my humble opinion, the petty carping levied against Bush by the Democrats proves again, it is better to have your eye plucked out by an eagle than to be nibbled to death by ducks." - Norman Liebmann

Supernews (and some others like Google) are exceptions, as they make money off their news server, so that can be plowed back into more disk space. :-)

In many cases, the news server is a bonus from the ISP, or from the employer, and has to live within a very limited budget.

Enjoy, DoN.

On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 20:13:54 -0700, Sunworshipper calmly ranted:

I download message headers -with- bodies and can instantly tell. Don't you have a small window with the subscribed groups which gives you a count of unread messages (or headers)?

Using my Disgronification Plonkifier(tmLJ), I weed out most of the constantly babbling idiots and never see their posts (unless someone replies with the quoted crap). After trying the new 2.0, I reverted to 1.93 and will remain there until they get the next-gen filters engaged. I want to filter body text. Other than that, Agent has served me very well for nigh onta a decade. Not bad for $29.

- Inside every older person is a younger person wondering WTF happened. ---

Website Application Programming

On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 05:57:45 -0700, Larry Jaques vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:

remove ns from my header address to reply via email

Leaving them to say whatever they like about you to other people....

***************************************************** I have decided that I should not be offended by anybody's behaviour but my own......the theory's good, anyway.

Sorry, missed that your asking me. Ahhh do I? LOL I get the bodies when I want to read them so there are 30 days or so of unread ones. I just watched when it loaded up before , but now it goes so fast I can't catch the number.