The "NEWGROUPS" command seems to be broken

[David C.]

I read news with Gnus under Emacs. By default, it checks for new
newsgroups by issuing a "NEWGROUPS" command. In the last several weeks,
it has not found any new groups.

When I switched it over to reading the entire active file, it found five
new groups.

I obviously don't want my newsreader pulling the active file every time
I connect. It's slow and it wastes bandwidth.

Who might I talk to so Verizon's news admin can look into supporting
this important feature?

-- David

[Stephen Harris]

Post by David C.
I read news with Gnus under Emacs. By default, it checks for new
newsgroups by issuing a "NEWGROUPS" command. In the last several weeks,
it has not found any new groups.

[...]

Post by David C.
Who might I talk to so Verizon's news admin can look into supporting
this important feature?

It does work.

% telnet news.verizon.net nntp
Trying 199.45.49.11...
Connected to news.verizon.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
200 This connection requires username/password authentication. (Tornado v1.0.6)
authinfo user USERNAME
381 More Authentication Required
authinfo pass PASSWORD
281 Welcome to the Verizon Usenet Service.
newgroups 20080102 000000
231 New newsgroups follow.
alt.amorc 0000000023 0000000002 y
alt.binaries.crackhead 0000389382 0000160579 y
alt.binaries.nospam.breasts.natural.multimedia 0000017045 0000008067 y
alt.binaries.pictures.clip-art 0000000187 0000000087 y
alt.binaries.propeller 0000020776 0000011588 y
.
quit
205 GoodBye
Connection closed by foreign host.

(not many groups added in the past month; sounds about right; not many were
added according to the announcements).

If your client has a bad timestamp then it might be asking for something in
the future, and so not getting anything useful.

newgroups 20080203 000000
231 New newsgroups follow.
.

If your client showed many more new groups when you downloaded the whole
active file then your client got very confused as to the active list and
needed resynching.

Either way, Verizon news server appears to be working properly :-)

[David C.]

Post by Stephen Harris
It does work.
% telnet news.verizon.net nntp
Trying 199.45.49.11...
Connected to news.verizon.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
200 This connection requires username/password authentication. (Tornado v1.0.6)
authinfo user USERNAME
381 More Authentication Required
authinfo pass PASSWORD
281 Welcome to the Verizon Usenet Service.
newgroups 20080102 000000
231 New newsgroups follow.
alt.amorc 0000000023 0000000002 y
alt.binaries.crackhead 0000389382 0000160579 y
alt.binaries.nospam.breasts.natural.multimedia 0000017045 0000008067 y
alt.binaries.pictures.clip-art 0000000187 0000000087 y
alt.binaries.propeller 0000020776 0000011588 y
.
quit
205 GoodBye
Connection closed by foreign host.

Those were the groups I found when I got the active file.

Post by Stephen Harris
(not many groups added in the past month; sounds about right; not many were
added according to the announcements).
If your client has a bad timestamp then it might be asking for something in
the future, and so not getting anything useful.
newgroups 20080203 000000
231 New newsgroups follow.
.
If your client showed many more new groups when you downloaded the whole
active file then your client got very confused as to the active list and
needed resynching.

My system clock is correct. There might be a bug in Gnus. I guess it's
time I re-downloaded the Emacs sources from CVS to make a build of the
latest version. :)

Thanks for checking this. I was not familiar enough with NNTP to do
what you just did to run your test. (I mostly know what's in the Gnus
documentation.)

-- David

[n***@sysadmininc.com]

Post by David C.
I read news with Gnus under Emacs. By default, it checks for new
newsgroups by issuing a "NEWGROUPS" command. In the last several weeks,
it has not found any new groups.
When I switched it over to reading the entire active file, it found five
new groups.
I obviously don't want my newsreader pulling the active file every time
I connect. It's slow and it wastes bandwidth.
Who might I talk to so Verizon's news admin can look into supporting
this important feature?

Maybe your news client is broken?

I've picked up the one or two new groups that have been added recently.