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Date:      Sun, 27 Jan 2002 16:08:20 +0100
From:      Cliff Sarginson <cliff@raggedclown.net>
To:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: leafnode question
Message-ID:  <20020127150820.GA1888@raggedclown.net>
In-Reply-To: <20020127121504.T178-100000@BLAST>
References:  <20020127052145.GB1370@raggedclown.net> <20020127121504.T178-100000@BLAST>

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On Sun, Jan 27, 2002 at 12:43:36PM +0200, Bernie wrote:
> 
> hi and thanks for your reply.
> 
> On Sun, 27 Jan 2002, Cliff Sarginson wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, Jan 27, 2002 at 03:32:47AM +0200, Bernie wrote:
> > >
> > > hello,
> > >
> > > i've just configured pine to work with getmail + leafnode
> > > for reading email and news. it seems to be going ok, but
> > > it seems i have a problem with leafnode.
> > >
> > > first, about my setup, it's workstation with dialup to isp.
> > > no local network exists. only dialup. so i've been trying
> > > to avoid running things like sendmail and nntp etc.
> > >
> > > it seems that leafnode doesn't run automaticaly on my configuration.
> > > i'm not sure if i'm right, but from what i gathered, leafnode is
> > > supposed to connect (run fetchnews) automaticaly when a client wants
> > > to read news.
> >
> > Nope.
> >
> > >
> > > so far, i got it to work, so i can read news from local directory
> > > using pine, but if i want to see if there are new posts for a group
> > > i got to run fetchmain manualy.
> > >
> > Yup.
> >
> > > also, if i try to read the body of a message, i get a message saying:
> > > leafnode... message ... has been marked for retrival. if i want to see
> > > this nessage i have to run fetchmail manualy. is this the way it's
> > > supposed to be working? i thought that when i select a group from
> > > pine, leafnode would connect and get all new headers, and if i choose
> > > a header, it would connect and retrieve the body...
> >
> > Nope.
> >
> > Leafnode is meant for you to create a little local news-server.
> > When configured and you run "fetchnews" for the first time it will
> > download all the info on the news-groups your up-stream news feed
> > supports.
> > Generally when users subscribe to a newsgroup the headers for that
> > group will be downloaded at the next fetchnews run.
> >
> > Your users should indicate that their news-server is now ..wherever
> > it is on your network. When they run up their news program and
> > mark a message for reading it does what you say, it marks it for
> > retrieval. Subsequent runs of fetchnews will get the messages so
> > marked. (I don't think you would want it to fire off a new connection
> > every time you mark a message for reading!). Normally you would run
> > fetchnews from a cron job, or by hand if you like, once/twice a day
> > or whatever.
> 
> this is all too bad... in fact, this is exactly what i try to do.
> everytime i select a message for reading, provided that i'm
> connected to the net, it should retrieve the message imediately!
>
 
Yes, I understand what you want :).

> what i'm trying to do is what netscape news-reader does by default,
> but wanna do it using pine. this is to avoid all the speed problems
> you get with pine if you scroll the headers list if you connect
> directly to the news server on the net...
>
In which case I don't think you want to run leafnode at all, because
it is meant for a local news "feed" so to speak, whereas you will
really need a direct connection to the upstream news provider (which
is what netscape is probably configured to do).
 
> maybe now that im' learning scripting (btw, i'm going for sh) i'll
> try to do a script that checks if i'm connected to the net, and if
> so it will run getmail + leafnode every 2 minutes or so, and as
> you said, set it to get the bodies as well.
>
Well, you could do that, I think you will need to experiment. The
problem is that fetchnews is pretty slow anyway.
 
> i'm not sure if it's gonna work. maybe it will take too much of
> my little 56k bandwidth if i subscribe to a busy group.
>
Depends on the group of course, if it is a text only group then that
may not be so much of an issue, if you like to download pictures
of elephants on holiday then it will obviously take much longer.
 
> still however, i think that retrieving the nessage imediately
> if i select it is a very logical thing to ask for. if i select
> a message, it means i want to read it now. not next time
> fetchnews runs.
>

Oh it's not illogical, but it's not the way leafnode is working.
 
> also, if i post a question, i want to be getting
> the answers in real-time automaticaly. it is usualy the case that
> i'm stucked with something and can't do anything more on my own,
> so i post and wait impatiently for a reply. that reply i wanna
> see it imediately when it comes, and i dont want to run fetchmail
> manualy every two minutes...

I guess that newsgroups are generally not used when a fast response
is expected, they do not have the responsiveness a mailing list
has usually. 

> 
> if we forget leafnode for a second, can you see any other solution
> on the problem? maybe some other tool? something that when you
> fire it up, if you are on the net, it would get all new headers
> for the groups you are subscribed 

Well that bit is ok, just put fetchnews in your connection script.

( and store them localy so that
> it doesn't connect to the news server if you scroll the headers),
> and also retrieve imediately any message body you select for reading.
> not necessarily something that works with pine. any tool or
> dediacated news-reader with that behaviour will do. one thing
> though, it's got to be text-based.
>
Well, I don't know, you might take a look at "slrn" which is pretty
good text based news reader, but I honestly do not know if it can be
configured the way you want within the leafnode framework.
 
> i realy like the text-base tools, like pine, but they seem to be
> designed with the lan/fast connection in mind, not for 56k dialup.
> the exact opposite from news agents for ms-win that seem to be
> made for dial up.
> 
> any suggestions will be wellcome.
> 
> thank you for all your help,
> >

Well, maybe someone knows of a newsreader that will work the way you
want. Sparking off fetchnews for every message or clump of messages
or in the hope of a reply will be very frustrating for you I would
think.

If I think of anything else I will let you know.
Maybe someone else has some ideas ?


-- 
Regards
Cliff



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