I use Newsfeeds for my commercial news service. They frequently have problems with servers going down and the alias being pointed to a "backup" server. Whenever this happens, I have to reset the server and download all headers from that server. NewsPro doesn't see new headers until I do this. Plus, since there is at least a months worth of files in large groups like alt.binaries.multimedia it takes hours and hours sometime to get all the headers downloaded. Is there anyway I can just get NewsPro to download new headers without having to reset the groups?
I'm probably missing something obvious here.
Downloading headers from servers
you can hardwire their servers to fixed ip addresses through the windows hosts file.
there were ip addresses at
http://www.thalunatik.com/newsfeeds/
but now i don't see them.
try to ask their support what normal ip addresses of their servers, maybe they are fixed.
search the forum for the windows 'hosts' file or look on the Internet.
if they switch servers, it means that the article numbers are not correct (the header list is not synchronized with the server), so it is impossible to know e.g. when the headers expire from the server even if they are there, but newspro is still able to download bodies from the server since it downloads by message-id.
if the numbers are out of the range of the article numbers the server has, it doesn't make sense to keep them any more, so newspro just deletes them when you invoke 'get new headers'.
there were ip addresses at
http://www.thalunatik.com/newsfeeds/
but now i don't see them.
try to ask their support what normal ip addresses of their servers, maybe they are fixed.
search the forum for the windows 'hosts' file or look on the Internet.
if they switch servers, it means that the article numbers are not correct (the header list is not synchronized with the server), so it is impossible to know e.g. when the headers expire from the server even if they are there, but newspro is still able to download bodies from the server since it downloads by message-id.
if the numbers are out of the range of the article numbers the server has, it doesn't make sense to keep them any more, so newspro just deletes them when you invoke 'get new headers'.
Unfortunately, Newsfeeds has gone to some different kind of newsfarm that is beyond my understanding. Regardless of which "server" I connect to, different groups are actually on different servers. For example, if I am connected to the named server goliath-east, I am actually pulling headers from different servers dependent on the names of the groups. Alt.binaries.multimedia would be pulled from one server while alt.binaries.stargate-sg1 would come from a different server, even though both groups are on the same "server" as far as the NewsPro configuration is concerned. So even though I connect to one named server, I'm actually pulling from multiple servers. I "think" the set up they are using is called "Surge Farm"? Does that ring any bells?
Right now the groups with multimedia in the name are pointed to a backup server because the main Multimedia server suffered a drive failure. When they switched over to the backup server, alt.binaries.multimedia did not see new headers until I rescanned the headers. But alt.binaries.stargate-sg1, on the same "server" went on without a hitch. So I don't know how I can get the full functionality out of all the available newsfeeds servers if I drop down to IP addresses.
Right now, alt.binaries.multimedia is available on 6 newsfeeds servers, each with 3 connection per server. However all 6 of these servers are fed from 2 actual multimedia servers, one on the east coast and one on the west coast. So if I dropped down to the IP address for the actual multimedia servers, I would only have 3 connections on each server. I would lose 12 download threads that way.
Does any of this make any sense to anyone but me?
Right now the groups with multimedia in the name are pointed to a backup server because the main Multimedia server suffered a drive failure. When they switched over to the backup server, alt.binaries.multimedia did not see new headers until I rescanned the headers. But alt.binaries.stargate-sg1, on the same "server" went on without a hitch. So I don't know how I can get the full functionality out of all the available newsfeeds servers if I drop down to IP addresses.
Right now, alt.binaries.multimedia is available on 6 newsfeeds servers, each with 3 connection per server. However all 6 of these servers are fed from 2 actual multimedia servers, one on the east coast and one on the west coast. So if I dropped down to the IP address for the actual multimedia servers, I would only have 3 connections on each server. I would lose 12 download threads that way.
Does any of this make any sense to anyone but me?
probably they want to provide better retention so a server can keep only a limited number of newsgroups and the actual server number is too large to be passed over to the end users.
it would be expensive in performance, time and code clarity terms to try to synchronize existing articles with the server taking into account the possibility that the server has been switched. if a lot of articles are out of the server article range in general case noone will want to recheck whether they are still on the server since it is a long process, it will take longer than downloading all headers anew.
the only thing that maybe could be done is making the task manager independent so when you reset the newsgroup articles marked for download will remain as such, with the option to synchronize the task manager with actual content - automatically or manually, i'm seriosly considering such an approach since there are other advantages using it.
in newspro you can reset newsgroup for a server, if only one server is affected and the same headers come through different gateways you can keep everything - if you know which server has been switched. you can reset the server in the servers pane or if you want to apply that only to one newsgroup expand the server, select the newsgroup and invoke 'reset newsgroup(s) for the server'.
it would be expensive in performance, time and code clarity terms to try to synchronize existing articles with the server taking into account the possibility that the server has been switched. if a lot of articles are out of the server article range in general case noone will want to recheck whether they are still on the server since it is a long process, it will take longer than downloading all headers anew.
the only thing that maybe could be done is making the task manager independent so when you reset the newsgroup articles marked for download will remain as such, with the option to synchronize the task manager with actual content - automatically or manually, i'm seriosly considering such an approach since there are other advantages using it.
in newspro you can reset newsgroup for a server, if only one server is affected and the same headers come through different gateways you can keep everything - if you know which server has been switched. you can reset the server in the servers pane or if you want to apply that only to one newsgroup expand the server, select the newsgroup and invoke 'reset newsgroup(s) for the server'.