Usenet Explorer

I currently use UE to connect to both news.astraweb.com and secure.news.us.easynews.com via SSL. Astraweb supports xzver/xzhrd compression, but for some reason seems to have zlib compression disabled. Easynews uses zlib, but doesn't appear to support xzver/xzhdr. No problem, UE is supposed to autodetect and just use whichever is supported, right? Well, not quite. When I enable support for xzver/xzhdr in UE, the Easynews connections stall most of the time. This doesn't happen when I connect to the non-ssl Easynews server(but they don't support xzver/xzhdr either, as far as I know).

So right now my choices are either to disable xzver/xzhdr, and only get compression on Easynews, or enable it and get compression on Astraweb but connection problems on Easynews. With previous versions of UE, I could selectively enable compression support, but I can't seem to find a download link for the last version with server-specific compression settings(I think it was 2.4.7. I don't suppose I could get a copy of that version somewhere, or if someone knows what the source of this problem might be?

if unchecking the option makes the difference - try to contact them and describe the problem. maybe they want to disable xzver/xzhdr on their server if they have SSL zlib enabled.

2.4.7 or whatever version it was is not relelvant.

those versions didn't support diablo xzver/xzhdr implementation, since the command wasn't documented (check v2.4 release notes you can see the misconception), someone on the newsserver side let me know about existence of another version, i contacted the developer who added it and got it working. the per server option was for those UE versions which supported only astraweb version of xzver/xhdr. i want to minimize the number options and here it seemed per server option was excessive so i removed it (even as it took about a day to add it).

are you sure it happens only on SSL server? should be no difference between SSL and non-SSL. better you contact them and let me know what they replied.

easynews has the same parent company as UNS and ngroups - highwinds. UNS has SSL zlib disabled and xzver/xzhdr enabled; ngroups has SSL zlib enabled and xzver/xzhdr disabled; easynews maybe hosted on another farm with different settings. usually they are interested to resolve such problems. few days ago i was troubleshooting a problem with zlib on the server side for a netherlands provider, SSL connections with zlib enabled just stalled, they didn't compile zlib right, but in their case it wasn't connected to checking compressed headers option, if you tell it is in your case it is something different.

If I use the non-SSL server, checking the xzver option doesn't cause a problem, but I get no compression. Checking it with the SSL server causes connection problems. Leaving it unchecked with the SSL server gives me working connections and zlib compression. So it seems clear that the SSL Easynews server is using zlib and not xzver, but for some reason when UE checks for xzver against that server, I get connection problems.

And 2.4.7 is completely relavent, since it's the Astraweb version of xzver that I want to enable. With 2.4.7 I could enable it only for Astraweb, and stick to just zlib for my Easynews connection. Right now I'd kill for a copy of 2.4.7 or even 2.4.5

Nazgul wrote:Right now I'd kill for a copy of 2.4.7 or even 2.4.5

No need for killing , heres ue247reg.exe
Edit: Link removed.

jonib

then better use 2.4.9 (check release notes), but the best is v2.5.

why you don't want to check it with easynews support? i mean why to use a buggy server when you are the customer and can have it resolved or you and all other easynews users?

ok i got test account and tested it.

as i expected the result is the same with SSL and non-SSL

in both cases server stops transmitting data near the end of xover data

it doesn't reach the end.

it means probably zlib deflate is not called with Z_FINISH flag, some buggy version which cannot work with anything.

so i let them know about the problem so most likely they will fix it now.

alex wrote:then better use 2.4.9 (check release notes), but the best is v2.5.

why you don't want to check it with easynews support? i mean why to use a buggy server when you are the customer and can have it resolved or you and all other easynews users?

I did check with Easynews support, but I didn't know whether it was UE or Easynews that was doing something wrong, and naturally the reponses I got from each party pointed at the other party.

alex wrote:ok i got test account and tested it.

as i expected the result is the same with SSL and non-SSL

in both cases server stops transmitting data near the end of xover data

it doesn't reach the end.

it means probably zlib deflate is not called with Z_FINISH flag, some buggy version which cannot work with anything.

so i let them know about the problem so most likely they will fix it now.

Thanks for looking into it, I couldn't have figured that out myself.

most likely they are running some experimental version from late 2007 - early 2008, i got reply from the programmer who implemented it on the server side.

also usually when xzver/xzhdr is enabled - SSL zlib is disabled, to avoid CPU overhead on doing zlib twice, and here it is enabled, maybe they are not even aware those commands are enabled, and no other client besides UE right now implements diablo version of xzver/xzhdr.

highwinds have another farm with the price of the easynews cheapest plan (when subscribing on quarterly basis) which doesn't have this problem (no xzver/xzhdr, but ssl zlib is enabled), if you need it pm me i give you a link, the only difference that account is unlimited, not GB aware like easynews, but easynews may have some other features like web access, the other one is just nntp access.

try to forward my previous reply where i mention test account to them (not this one) and ask for confirmation it was forwarded to their engineering, sometimes communication is getting lost on the way. also mention i recommend to them just to disable xzver/xzhdr commands on the server side as long as they have already SSL zlib enabled.

From today's(4/28) Sytem Status Announcement on Easynews:

We are currently investigating questions regarding xzver problems. We
will have more information on this as soon as it becomes available.



So their engineers are definitely aware of the issue.

i see it is not fixed yet.

if someone wants to switch server farm to use the same usenet provider company to which easynews brand belongs, same price, free trial, just account is unlimited versus easynews limited (but only pure usenet access, no web) with compressed headers working - pm me, it appears it takes for them too long to fix it, i think they consider it as low priority issue.