Tin also has problems with this newsgroup. Urs and I are looking at this issue. I hope Pan group fixes it too!
On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 10:45:08PM +0000, SciFi wrote: > > Hi, > > FYI, I just added the following to “Bug 549655 – Support 64 bit > article numbers”: > > We should note on this bug: > > Apparently sometime late on Tuesday 21 April 2009 CDT (UTC -0500), > some people using Xnews began suddenly logging strange errors > showing “bits index out of range” and asking for help in the > ‘news.software.readers’ group. > > Turns out they were trying to access ‘alt.binaries.boneless’ which > of course is the largest group by far. And they were using > GigaNews. > > Yep, you guessed it: GN and other servers have finally went over > the 31–bit limit for article numbers. ;) [RFC-3977 sets this > limit, while older related RFCs had no published limit AFAIK, > go figure…] > > The discussion starts here with tpka ‘pianotech’ getting the > error: <news:[email protected]> > > Later in that thread, on Thursday 23 April, tpka ‘Guy’ was > watching his newsrc counter for boneless. By 3:50pm CDT, it > tripped over the limit (not sure what server he was using at the > time). > > Later that same date (night-time 23 April CDT), an Astraweb user > posted a confirmation there. > > Then the discussion touched on how some UseNet–providers are > simply effective clones of the major ones. Which means this > problem has already begun spreading all over creation. ;) > > Most people are aware of boneless and do not try to load/sync > headers; instead, keen usenetters will resort to NZB indexing > sites, or FTD or such, to try locating what–not, which all operate > on the “Message-ID” gizmo. > > But one does not need to actually load any headers from boneless > to experience this problem: As soon as you open boneless in your > news–reader, the NNTP dialog will try reading the “high–water > mark” for the group, which is over the 31–bit limit. *Boom* right > there your software might experience an error if it hasn’t been > patched yet. > > There probably are several areas in the code for any news–reader > that need patching, as you can see in the attachment for this very > bug for pan2. The “open group” code is just one place. > > So this to me seems to be an historical moment. :) > > And it is a bit uncanny that GN did predict it occurring within a > rough time-frame (re: article published at the URL mentioned at > the top of this bug–report[1]). > > It seems the next–biggest group is ‘alt.binaries.nl’ which has > lots of room, but who really knows what will happen in the future… > > > [1] http://www.giganews.com/news/article/64-bit-Usenet.html -- "Every ruler sleeps on an anthill." --Afghani /\___/\ / /\ /\ \ Phil/Ant @ http://antfarm.ma.cx (Personal Web Site) | |o o| | Ant's Quality Foraged Links (AQFL): http://aqfl.net \ _ / E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected] ( ) _______________________________________________ Pan-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pan-users
