Re: [leafnode-list] Fetchnews Problem

[krasel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Cornelius Krasel)]

Colin Brough wrote:

> What I've also seen is a problem with new groups. Normally when a new
> group appears, slrn (0.9.5.7) displays it, and I promptly unsubscribe
> (without ever reading it) and never hear of it again. However, recently,
> the groups keep appearing as new groups, every time I enter slrn. Reliable
> solution is to go hack the groupinfo file... Whenever I've done this,
> the relevant group has an entry something like:
> 
>     alt.audio.pro.live-sound 1 1 953208460 -x-

The large integer is the time at which leafnode encountered this group
as new. It can be converted to a sensible time format by the following
small C program:

%---cut here---
#include <time.h>
#include <stdio.h>

void main( int argc, char *argv[] ) {
    time_t t;

    if ( argc != 2 ) {
       fprintf(stderr,"Usage: %s [time in seconds since Jan 1, 1970, 00:00:00]\n");
       exit(1);
    }
    sscanf( argv[1], "%d", &t);
    printf("%s\n",ctime(&t));
}
%---cut here---

In your case, it appears that this group was newly encountered on
Thu Mar 16 13:07:40 2000.

If there is a 0 in this field, Leafnode assumes that the group was
already in existence when the last groupinfo file was fetched from
the upstream server. It therefore will never be listed as new.

A newsreader determines which newsgroups are "new" by sending a
string like the following to the newsserver (i.e. leafnode):

NEWGROUPS 000318 120000

This would list all groups that have been installed since Mar 18th, 2000
at noon.

I have no idea which slrn version is the most recent one, but old
slrn's had troubles with the two leading 00's (i.e. a typical Y2K
problem). I am quite surprised to see that the most recent slrn
version on freshmeat is your 0.9.5.7 which is from mid-1999; I have
no idea whether this version still suffers from the Y2K problem or
not.

HTH,
--Cornelius.

-- 
/* Cornelius Krasel, U Wuerzburg, Dept. of Pharmacology, Versbacher Str. 9 */
/* D-97078 Wuerzburg, Germany   email: phak004@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  SP4 */
/* "Science is the game we play with God to find out what His rules are."  */

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