Firstly, I am sorry if this is off-topic for
this particular group.  I was unsure as to what
catagory this would go under so "general" seemed a
safe bet.

	Recently (like a week or so) I've begun to have
trouble getting the news from the pov-ray news server.
Before that, my software was grabbing everything from
the server with no trouble at all.  In fact, this is the
same software I've used for some years.
	What happens now is my newsreader connects
to the povray news server succesfully and gets some
messages but then gets stuck and times out.
	Oddly enough, this *seems* to be happening
mostly on the pictures (binaries) newsgroup.
	I am trying to narrow down the cause of the
problem, especially the question of if the problem is
on my end or the server end.
	So, my actual question is: is anyone else
having trouble getting news from the pov-ray
server this week?
	The follow up question will be, if others
are having trouble, is something up with the
server?  (obviosuly, if no one else is having trouble,
it is something on my end, though i can't imagine what)



-- 
to all the companies who wait until a large user base becomes
dependant on their freeware, then shafting said happy campers with
mandatory payment for continued usage. I spit on your grave.

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In article <fqmlm05cccptu3e9nmigjcr2i6f6fqtr25@4ax.com>, 
pov### [at] almostbestwebnet says...
> 	Firstly, I am sorry if this is off-topic for
> this particular group.  I was unsure as to what
> catagory this would go under so "general" seemed a
> safe bet.
> 
> 	Recently (like a week or so) I've begun to have
> trouble getting the news from the pov-ray news server.
> Before that, my software was grabbing everything from
> the server with no trouble at all.  In fact, this is the
> same software I've used for some years.
> 	What happens now is my newsreader connects
> to the povray news server succesfully and gets some
> messages but then gets stuck and times out.
> 	Oddly enough, this *seems* to be happening
> mostly on the pictures (binaries) newsgroup.
> 	I am trying to narrow down the cause of the
> problem, especially the question of if the problem is
> on my end or the server end.
> 	So, my actual question is: is anyone else
> having trouble getting news from the pov-ray
> server this week?
> 	The follow up question will be, if others
> are having trouble, is something up with the
> server?  (obviosuly, if no one else is having trouble,
> it is something on my end, though i can't imagine what)
> 
I have been experiencing similar issues. It successfully captured all 
articles, loads the headers, then just got disconnected. Since then I 
have set it to also retrieve the article bodies, but that only fixes the 
problem I was having with it telling me it wasn't able to retrieve them 
when I clicked on a article. If I post a reply and forget to force it to 
reconnect, the replies fail to be sent until the next day, since a bit 
after it finishes retrieving things the server (and it has to be on the 
server end) disconnects and the client won't send out posts unless 
connected to the server. These problems 'never' happened until a few 
weeks ago, then all of the sudden my client kept losing connection, 
literally in the middle of reading or replying to an article. It drove me 
completely nuts until I made it retrieve the bodies along with the 
headers, but it is still a major pain in the rear even now with it still 
disconnecting for no bloody reason.

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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I had similar problems - connection works fine first, but later (about 
10 minutes) I get disconnected and can't connect anymore. It happened 
mostly when I tried to post something (that's why I didn't post that 
much in the last month :(

But I can't definitely say that it was a problem with the POV server, 
cause I had similar problems with other sites and therefore I think my 
router is to blame.

Thought I tell you nevertheless, one never knows what's important :)

Florian
-- 
camera{look_at-y*10location<8,-3,-8>*10}#local a=0;#while(a<999)sphere{
#local _=.01*a-4.99;#local p=a*.01-5;#local c=.01*a-4.995;<sin(p*pi)*5p
*10pow(p,5)*.01>sin(c*c*c*.1)+1pigment{rgb 3}}#local a=a+1;#end
/******** http://www.torfbold.com ******** http://www.imp.org ********/

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In article <416c3961$1@news.povray.org>, tor### [at] torfboldcom says...
> I had similar problems - connection works fine first, but later (about 
> 10 minutes) I get disconnected and can't connect anymore. It happened 
> mostly when I tried to post something (that's why I didn't post that 
> much in the last month :(
> 
> But I can't definitely say that it was a problem with the POV server, 
> cause I had similar problems with other sites and therefore I think my 
> router is to blame.
> 
Well.. This is nearly identical to my issue, save that I can 'force' a 
reconnection, though only after both I and the Gravity client manage to 
agree something went wrong. I doubt the likelihood of it being on our 
respective ends though. I am on dialup, so have no router to blame, nor 
can I reasonably argue that it is the ISP, unless both of ours use the 
same software, hardware, configurations, etc. This is highly improbable. 
The only possible issue I could see it is this is unique to Windows 
systems and resulting from some recent in-'security update'. However, I 
doubt all of us are using the same version of Windows and all of us are 
thus likely to be shackled with the same buggy patch, especially since 
there are only a handful of protocols, drivers and OS components in 
between such a client and the internet, so the glitch would have to 
reside in one of them (such as Winsock), not in the wide range of IE 
specific bits (at least in theory, but with MS, who knows what 
interdependencies actually exist...). If any of the three of us are not 
using Windows, we all use different versions (mines 98 btw) and different 
clients, then odds are even slimmer that it is on our end. Not to mention 
that you would expect a larger number of people reporting it if some 
recent patch mangled everyone's systems.

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 10:40:13 -0700, Patrick Elliott
<sha### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:

>In article <fqmlm05cccptu3e9nmigjcr2i6f6fqtr25@4ax.com>, 
>pov### [at] almostbestwebnet says...
>> 	Recently (like a week or so) I've begun to have
>> trouble getting the news from the pov-ray news server.
>> Before that, my software was grabbing everything from
>> the server with no trouble at all.  In fact, this is the
>> same software I've used for some years.
>> 
>I have been experiencing similar issues. It successfully captured all 
>articles, loads the headers, then just got disconnected. Since then I 
>have set it to also retrieve the article bodies, but that only fixes the 
>problem I was having with it telling me it wasn't able to retrieve them 
>when I clicked on a article. If I post a reply and forget to force it to 
>reconnect, the replies fail to be sent until the next day, since a bit 
>after it finishes retrieving things the server (and it has to be on the 
>server end) disconnects and the client won't send out posts unless 
>connected to the server. These problems 'never' happened until a few 
>weeks ago, then all of the sudden my client kept losing connection, 
>literally in the middle of reading or replying to an article. It drove me 
>completely nuts until I made it retrieve the bodies along with the 
>headers, but it is still a major pain in the rear even now with it still 
>disconnecting for no bloody reason.

Interesting.  This makes me suspect that perhaps it is not
something on my end.  Darn.  It would have been easier to
fix something on my end.  Now it's difficult because
the Problem is outside of my control and it is up to
others to trace & fix the problem.

After further experimentations I have narrowed it down to
the binaries newsgroup.  Not only that, it looks like certaion
articals are the source of the problem.  For instance,
yesterday my news software said "53 articals to go" when it
failed.  I tried again and again, it would always choke at
the "53 articals to go" point.  So I changed the program
preferences to get only the "52 most recent" postings.  This
it then did with no trouble.  I don't know *which*
posting because I can't see them (obviously).

Now, could this problem be based on the size of the posting?
Or is a new poster smoehow posting articals in such a away
that the server has trouble sending them?

More info: I use Windows ME as the OS, and hamster "classic"
as the newsgrabber.  I've used the same version since 2001
so (again) nothing has changed on my end.

So who does one contact for povray news server Problems?



-- 
to all the companies who wait until a large user base becomes
dependant on their freeware, then shafting said happy campers with
mandatory payment for continued usage. I spit on your grave.

Post a reply to this message

In article <9jkvm0lshe069nmaumqqqchtbi9p0od4aj@4ax.com>, 
pov### [at] almostbestwebnet says...
> More info: I use Windows ME as the OS, and hamster "classic"
> as the newsgrabber.  I've used the same version since 2001
> so (again) nothing has changed on my end.
> 
Mine Windows 98, using Gravity, so no common issue there, though it may 
be why mines successfully transfers everything, then dies during a 
posting, but yours hangs during the downloading. Though this doesn't make 
sense if it is the server having trouble sending them. I suspect more 
something that is tied to timeouts for the connection or some other odd 
issue. Though.... I was having the same problem you had on nearly every 
message when the reader was set to download only the headers. When I 
clicked on a header, it would go to the server to retrieve the actual 
article, but for some reason the server would fail to respond, but the 
client would insist it was still connected, until I clicked the dialog 
box to acknowledge the error, then the 'connected' icon actually showed a 
disconnect. Same behaviour I guess, your must do something slightly 
different when downloading the messages. Mine does:

1. Get a list of groups with new posts.
2. Retrieve headers from groups.
3. If set to defaults - download on demand.
   As set now - download all new posts.

Yours may be trying to retrieve a header, then the article for it, then 
the next header, etc or something, which is why it dies the same way mine 
did when downloading on demand. Who knows. It is definitely odd though.

> So who does one contact for povray news server Problems?
> 
If I knew...

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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