OESF Portables Forum
Everything Else => General Support and Discussion => Zaurus General Forums => Archived Forums => Software => Topic started by: RichS on January 13, 2004, 01:18:09 pm
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I\'m looking for an on-line/off-line usenet newsreader for my SL-5600 and any help would be greatly appreciated!
I have searched the net, here, and everywhere I can think of with no reasonable results.
Did I miss something obvious?
On my CLIE, I use Yanoff to get newsgroup postings. Read & reply off-line, then connect and transfer. It\'s only got a modem connection, no wireless.
I would like to do the same thing with my SL-5600, especially now that it\'s wireless...
Thanks for any help...
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I have a copy of ztin that I keep meaning to try out.
I did get it connecting to my news server and it downloaded all the news groups and filled my /home partition.
The trouble is that I have never used tin so I am not too sure how to use it.
I will get round to tying it on my 760 at some point.
Quotes from the tnn.sys.zaurus newsgroup:-
Subject: Re: Any PDA news sources for zaurus
Lines: 6
From: \"Pierre Métras\" <genepi@sympatico.ca>
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 17:23:21 -0500
Newsgroups: tnn.sys.zaurus
> I just got Zepo offline browser and its GREAT!!!
And next version will read news aloud, and add support for emails and NNTP
news, if I find time to finish it...
Subject: Re: News group reader
Lines: 14
From: Olaf Kaluza <olaf@criseis.ruhr.de>
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 16:45:22 GMT
Newsgroups: tnn.sys.zaurus
Hactar <ebenONE@tampabay.ARE-ARE.com.unmunge> wrote:
>pine is primarily a mailreader. Last time I checked, its bolt-on
>newsreader was pretty bad. Things may have changed...
The best newsreader is tin! <BG> I use it on the Z and compiled it
myself. Someone said in this newsgroup a few weeks ago that it is also
available from debian for the Z.
Olaf
and a few from killefiz :-
slrn:
http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=1054 (http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=1054)
pine:
http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=1053 (http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=1053)
I think that I got my copy of ztin from debian, but as it is a character based app, it should compile and work for the zarus from source without much fiddling.
Let me know if they are any good, and I might find the time to try them myself.
Peter.
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Also check out this thread here:
http://www.zaurus.com/dev/board/index.php?...?showtopic=2906 (http://www.zaurus.com/dev/board/index.php?showtopic=2906)
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Thanks for the replies & suggestions. I grabbed all the files and will see how things work soon... I knew I should have gotten my linux box working ;-)
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opie-mail does nntp
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So far I\'m dong about 50/50. The 5600 is fine, but still no samba connections and newsreaders aren\'t doing well either.
I tried installing both slrn and pine. They don\'t show up in the install software list... And I don\'t know enough yet to know why, or how to try an aternative install. Tin doesn\'t even come in an ipk so that\'s out...
The search (and learning) continue...
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They are all (pine,slrn and tin) character based (no gui) and will run from the terminal app. But you are only reading text anyway so you don\'t really need a gui.
Character based programs will also be many times quicker, as they don\'t have the gui overhead.
Peter.
*edit
I have just re read this, I thought you meant they didn\'t show up in the application tab :?
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Ok,
I was going to try slrn anyway so.
You will need this version of ipkg to install it :-
http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=874 (http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=874)
Once that is installed then enter ipkg-new install slrn_0.9.7.4_arm.ipk
You wil need to set the NNTPSERVER variable eg
export NNTPSERVER=text.news.ntlworld.com
Try and find a text only news server if possible, the above can only be accessed from NTL accounts I believe.
Then just type slrn, it will get the current list of newsgroups and display them on the screen.
You are kind of on your own from here, as it is the first time I\'ve used this too
Peter.
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Thanks for giving me the incentive to try out slrn, I really like it
It reminds me of the news reader I used to use on my 386, a loooong time ago.
It works great on the c760, but you may struggle a little with a 5500/5600 as the resolution is not really up to the job.
Peter.
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Finally has time to try slrn. Had to install with the above mentioned ver of ipkg, and to internal meme. Just couldn\'t get it to work from a card... But I did get it to work and read some posts last night. Unfortunately, the rec.photo group I wanted was at the bottom of a 28000 item list and I didn\'t spend the time to read the commands...
Now I have to look into getting the 900K newsrc file onto the sd card. At least that would help a bit.
As far as using it. Well, it is useable. Can\'t see the post subjects which is kind of important. And the actual message area is a bit small, but it does wrap and scroll. As soon as I figure out how to subscribe to a group and not have to scroll through 25000 listing to get there, it would be functional. And have it _not_ grab the headers to all 6000 posts... The last 500, or 100 would be just fine and a lot quicker. Not what I would call \'ideal\', but functional, and deffinitely better than nothing...
But at least I do have some form of newsreader now. Thanks for the info & help!
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Boy it sure helps to read the docs ;-)
I now have it running, still in main memory, but with _both_ 900K newsrc file off on sd card. That helps a whole lot.
The only real complaints I have are: Have to keep hitting \'w\' to wrap message lines. But I think that can be set in the config? And not being able to read the subjects. Again, the display seems completely configurable. So I\'m hoping to get rid of the poster\'s name and just leave the subject.
It\'s not fancy gui, but it works, online anyway...
Now all I have to do is figure out how to run it from an icon and how to make it work offline. It won\'t accept the \'spool\' setting?
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I could have sworn that I replied to this, but it\'s not there, so I will try again.
The screen problem is not an issue on the cl760 as it is landscape 640*480. I could imagine that it would cause an issue on a smaller screen.
As for offline reading, it looks like the spool settings are required for a local news feed. This local news feed looks like it has to exist.
I will try to compile slrnpull to create this local feed, if this doesn\'t work then I will look at an alternative (slurp?).
Peter.
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Ahh, thanks. Although you\'ve lost me a bit... Sems like a \"local news feed\" would be a bit complex? And I\'m more than happy to admit my ignorance ;-) But if it\'s something that can be accomplished on the Z, it would make me very happy.
On one hand, I\'m very surprised at what seems like a lack of interest for a newsreader. On the other hand, after spending a half hour reading through a couple of groups I used to keep up on, I can see whay most people don\'t bother any more...
I still find it initeresting to read through the posts though and the worthless ones can be ignored. Or they will be as soon as I can see the subjects... I do envy you guys with clamshell/high-rez models....
Overall, I have no complaints about the Z. It\'s a great little machine and it\'s getting me back into linux. On top of that, it also replaces my old pda. What more could I ask for?
Thanks!
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The local feed bit is simple, you just use the slrnpull command to download the newsgroup you require and store it on your cf/sd card, then you point slrn to this as opposed to an online news server.
The problem is that certain options need to be set when the program is compiled, this doesn\'t seem to have been done when the version on killefiz was compiled.
using zgcc2 on the zaurus everything compiles until the linking part, and then I get error\'s like this :-
undefined reference to `dlclose`
relocation truncated to fit R_ARM_PC24 dlclose
There are several of these (with different reference errors) and then it just quits.
Cross compiling fails in the configure phase when it tries to test functions by compiling and running them. it\'s compiling for arm and trying to test run it on my intel box.
I am going to try dev_img1.3 tonight to see if I have any better luck with it.
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Well the concept sounds simple. The problems and compiling would be a bit beyond me at the moment... I do some C++, but in windows (NOT by choice!).
And downloading an entire newsgroup, even to a card, sounds like a lot of time and space.
Which brings up another slrn question. I haven\'t seen any config to set how many messages it pulls off the server. Through my dial-up, getting over 6,000 headers takes quite a while... Is there no way to set say 500 headers as I do in Agent? I have to go through the .rc file again, but I didn\'t see anything. Maybe I missed it? Also didn\'t see how to change the header display so I could get rid of the \'from\' to see the subject. But maybe I missed that too?
I downloaded the zgcc2 and plan on installing it, but it will take me quite a while to get into linuux programming and gcc....
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Well I still get the same errors while compiling slrn with the older gcc install :cry:
As far as getting headers goes, it goes into slrn, gives you a display showing your subscribed newsgroups.
Highlight the group you want, press return once.
It will then say \"newsgroupname: Read how many? (default 43965) \"
if you press return here it will read the full amount in brackets, type 500 press return and it will only read 500 in.
The reason why I am giving the exact keypresses here, is that the line is quite long and this info may be getting truncated on the 5600 screen.
Have you tried the screen rotate? It comes installed with some of the roms(tkcrom) if you rotate the screen to landscape mode before going into the terminal you should get more on the screen. The only problem then is that your keyboard is to the side rather than under the screen.
As far as the offline bit goes, (if I ever get it to compile) you should be able to just download the headers to your card, disconnect the internet connection, browse through the headers at your leisure marking any interesting ones. When you go back online it will pull in the bodies for the marked headers only, and pull back any new headers since your last connection.
This won\'t take up much space on text only groups, and will be quicker as you are not downloading every header for the group every time you connect.
You should also be able to select some smaller groups as allways download all bodies. Once the message has been read you can run the expire script which will delete them from your storage.
Peter.
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Yes, that\'s exactly what I would like, if you can get it to work ;-)
I haven\'t tried a screen rotate yet. I still use the Sharp 1.32 roms and am not too sure I want to try a different rom. Maybe when I\'m more sure of my zaurusing, and being able to restore things if it doesn\'t go well... I\'ve heard that the old rotate program won\'t work on the 5600, but it must be possible because tkcvideo rotates the playback quite nicely. It might be a good idea for slrn and I should do some more searching for that.
See, that\'s what I mean by reading the docs ;-) I must have missed that. I thought it meant something more like \"get from message number\", so if it said 5524, I entered 5000 thinking it would only get 24 headers...
Thanks for your help & work. Someday in the not so distant future, I may be able to try a compile myself... Unfortunately, there\'s a lot of ground to cover from here to there ;-)
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Yes, that\'s exactly what I would like, if you can get it to work
I just have done
I had to sacrifice slang support as that was where the errors where coming from. but it does seem to work ok.
I downloaded 132 articles from tnn.sys.zaurus which took 1m:40s and used 792 kb in /mnt/card/news.
I reloaded news support from the my local feed, which put my ~/.jnewsrc file down to 313 bytes as it now has only 1 newsgroup in it.
slrn startup time is now almost immediate, it doesn\'t have to download all the headers everytime it starts.
I\'ve heard that the old rotate program won\'t work on the 5600
Looks like it has been fixed, see the last post in this thread:-
http://www.zaurususergroup.com/index.php?n...ighlight=rotate (https://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=1119&highlight=rotate)
Thanks for your help & work. Someday in the not so distant future, I may be able to try a compile myself... Unfortunately, there\'s a lot of ground to cover from here to there
I\'ve taken more than I have given from this forum, shortly I will be able to give something back (other than just advice), even if you are the only one that wants it
Everybody has to start somewhere. I have been meaning to do this ever since I got my first zaurus (sl5500) you gave me the incentive to do it so I should be thanking you.
I will mail you the binaries once I have done a bit of testing first, and compiled some sort of \'howto\' guide to get it all working.
Peter.
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Sounds great! And it goes to card instead of internal, which is even better. I would think when all this works, there will be more interest in it.
I grabbed the fixed rotation ipk and will give that a look later. Don\'t know if I\'ll have time tonight though...
Yes, it\'s nice to give back now and then. I started \'taking\' quite a lot on a camera board a long time ago. And I\'ve turned into one of the \'givers\' when I can But in a sense, even the \'takers\' give to others because they supply the question/answer posts that people come here to read to solve their problems. If noone asked, we\'d all lose... And official \'givers\' are very much appreciated! Thank you for joining their ranks! ;-)
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I have compiled the latest slrn (0.9.8.0) with slrnpull if anyone is interested. I made a ipk, but I am not sure if it will work. I will upload it to the downloads section if anyone wants to try it. zbones, to fix the compile errors you were getting, you need to create a symlink called libdl.so to libdl-2.2.2.so. I just put the link in /usr/lib/ by doing a \"ln -s /lib/libdl-2.2.2.so /usr/lib/libdl.so\". After creating the link, you then have to re-run configure. For some reason, the linker needs the library to be called libdl.so to see it.
Jeff
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Thanks for the tip jrebaker.
I did manage to compile it eventually, I noticed that the link errors were all for slang, so I did the configure with --with-slrnpull --disable-slang
I was going to make an ipk of it tonight, as I have been busy lately, (was in london on Tuesday). Since you have made an ipk and your version includes slang, then it would probably be easier for you to upload yours.
How did you get round the check for sendmail? did you compile it?
I cheated by creating a shell script called sendmail that just did exit 0.
If you managed to compile sendmail, I wouldn\'t mind a copy of the binary.
Peter.
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Here\'s my setup instructions I was writing for slrnpull :-
cd /mnt/card
mkdir -p /.news/slrnpull/news
Ln -s /mnt/card/.news /var/spool/news
If you create the directory prefixed with a . as above then it stops other apps searching through you 20,000 news messages you have on there.
Add the following lines to ~/.slrnrc (create it if it doesn\'t exist)
set spool_inn_root "/var/spool/news/slrnpull"
set spool_root "/var/spool/news/slrnpull/news"
set spool_nov_root "/var/spool/news/slrnpull/news"
set use_slrnpull 1
set read_active 1
set server_object "spool"
set hostname "zaurus.com" (or enter a real fully qualified domain name)
set username "root" (or enter zaurus, or any other user you have created)
create slrnpull.conf int /mnt/card/.news/slrnpull
here\'s mine :-
default 500 14 0
# indicates a default value of 500 articles to be retrieved from the server and
# that such an article will expire after 14 days.
# The following lines will get this default
alt.true-crime
tnn.sys.zaurus
rec.autos.sport.f1
rec.autos.sport.f1.moderated
Edit it and add your news groups in, or just leave the tnn.sys.zaurus group.
get the news
type slrnpull -d /var/spool/news/slrnpull -h text.news.ntlworld.com (substitute for your news server)
using broadbank via wifi card on a cl760 :-
132 articles in tnn.sys.zaurus took 1m:40s and took 792 kb in /mnt/card/news
rec.autos.sport.f1 21176 articles examined, 11820 articles retrieved, 2hr:37m size on sd card 56mb
I only managed to average 4086bps downloading even though the cable connection, and wifi card support much more than this. This was either down to the news server (wouldn\'t supprise me) or the fact that I was writing to my 256mb sd card which is pretty slow storage, my cf card is much faster, but I can\'t use it at the same time as my wifi card.
The next time you run it, it only gets new articles.
run slrn, telling it to use spool, and re-create it\'s news server list from your local feed.
slrn --spool --create
press s on the newsgroup to subscribe to it. (note the u next to it disappears)
Press return to select the group, press return again to read all headers (you may as well, it\'s now almost instant).
see the docs page for slrn here :- http://slrn.sourceforge.net/docs/index.html
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How did you get round the check for sendmail? did you compile it?
I cheated by creating a shell script called sendmail that just did exit 0.
If you managed to compile sendmail, I wouldn\'t mind a copy of the binary.
Peter.
Thats funny, I was going to do the same thing, but I decided to try to pass \"--with-mta=/dev/null\" to configure and it seemed to work.
Jeff
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I have to thank both of you for your work on this! Now if I could find the ipk, I\'d be more than happy to give it a try!
jeff: Have you uploaded it already? If so, where? If not, please do ;-)
Peter, thanks for the setup info. As soon as I get the new package, I\'ll give it a try...
Rich...
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Rich,
It is in the Packages/Applications section of the downloads area. Let me know if it works, as it is my first package. It installed on my system, but I couldn\'t get it to install to my SD card. Anyone know if I have to do anything special to allow it to instal to a CF/SD card? Once it is installed, you can set an environment variable or pass an option to slrnpull to have it download the newsfeed to wherever you want.
Jeff
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Okay, got it. I\'ll give it a try very soon. Gotta do a backup first ;-) then save a few things, then read over the above setup, then try the install. getting it out to sd card would be very nice. It was easy to get the huge nwssrc file out to card, and like a lot of people my memory is starting to fill up. So is my Zaurus ;-)
Thanks! I\'ll let you know what happens.
Rich...
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While I\'m waiting ;-) A quick update. The ipk instaleld just fine. I set up the conf files as per Peter\'s instructions and ran slrnpull. So now I have nothing to do... It\'s downloading the newsgroups at a stated avg of 2300bps (but there is a lag between messages). Seems to take about 10 to 12 minutes for the 500 messages, and that\'s from my poor dial-up through the Z\'s wifi, plus quite a few e-mail recieves from this machine. It\'s a normal speed for my setup no matter what newsreader I use. It\'s gone through maybe 4 of the six groups I entered in, so I still have some time to kill, but it looks like it\'s woring.
The only problem I had was storage space! I had to go in and delete quite a few files to make room. Thanks goodness I can run more than one program... I may cut down the number of messages to 100 instead of 500. What was I thinking? ;-)
I\'ll post again once it\'s done and I see how slrn reads the groups off-line... Right now, I may as well go get another cup of coffee ;-)
Rich...
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Well, that took a while... Now slrnpull worked just fine apparently. But when I try to run slrn using: slrn --spool --create
I get:
\"Unable to find a valid hostname for constructing your e-mail address. You will have to psecify a hostname in your .slrnrc file.\"
Oddly, there is no \".slrnrc\" file, just the \"slrn.rc\" file, which does have my hostname set and worked just fine in the previous installation of slrn. I even copied slrn.rc to .slrnrc, then copied both to the .news/slrnpull directory. Didn\'t help...
Got any ideas?
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Sorry, I posted just before I got an idea... I ran slrn with the -i /home/etc/slrn.rc option and it worked perfectly!
So, does this version of slrn look for slrn.rc or .slrnrc and where is it looking? Obviously not in /home/etc or the .news/slrnpull directories? A minor problem though and it looks like it all does work fine except for this...
Thanks,
Rich...
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By default it will look in your home directory eg ~/.slrnc
the ~ is a shortcut to your home directory in bash and a few other shells.
You only need the create option the first time you run slrn.
If you are running out of space you may want to cut the expire option down a bit too, I set it to 14 days, but it seems to only expire stuff that you have had for 14 days, ie most of the 100mb of news(30,000 articles) I pulled down is several months old but expire hasn\'t deleted anthing yet, not even articles I have read.
To expire the news, you will need to run
slrnpull -d /var/spool/news/slrnpull --expire
Did you sort out how to remove the author from the status bar?
in the default slrnrc file there are several sets, some without the authors filed, you use esc a to switch between them.
Peter
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Ahh, thanks. I copied my slrn.rc to /home/zaurus/.slrnrc and slrn starts up just fine now. I don\'t even have to set the nntpserver anymore. This is nice!
Yes, I configured the display with:
set wrap_flags 7
header_display_format 0 \"%F%-5l:%t%s\"
This causes the wrap-lines to always be on and the headers to display only the unread/read, size and subject. And I can see about 20 characters of subject which is enough to let me know if it\'s junk or worth reading, most of the time...
I tried the --expire command. Nothing as you noticed. I may try to go in a delete files manually. Downloading 500 was overly optimistic and used far too much space. I have since reset the default to 100 messages and a 7 day expire. I was hoping it would delete read messages...
The \'create\' option seems to be needed if you add a newsgroup also. I misspelled a group and of course got no messages. After fixing the spelling and rerunning slrnpull, I got the messages but slrn wouldn\'t display the group unless I hit \'l\'. So I tried \'create\' again and everything showed up.
So now that I\'ve got it congigured and know where to put .slrnrc, all looks and works good. I don\'t know about posting though? I hate sending \'test\' posts... And from the looks of thing, the groups have degraded considerably since I kept up on them... Now if we could only filter out the junk...
Thanks, as usual :-)
Rich...
Oh, maybe a P.S.
If this new package needs a .srlnrc file in the home directory, maybe it should put one there instead of the slrn.rc it puts in the etc directory? Would make things easier for future users...
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I tried the --expire command. Nothing as you noticed. I may try to go in a delete files manually.
No, I wouldn\'t do this :? slrn refuses to start with some error about being unable to retrieve an article.
The only way round this is to run slrnpull with --recreate.
This then means you lose the info of which articles you have already read.
Instead, wait 24 hours from when you downloaded the news, set expire to 1 day and run it. You will then only have current news and can set your expire back to something more realistic.
500 was overly optimistic and used far too much space.
You thought you were overly optimistic, I had it set to 20,000. took over 100mb for 4 newsgroups. I downloaded these last saturday so set expire to 4 days, and after a 45min wait my local news source is a bit more realistic with only the last 4 days of news
Most of the articles in the F1 group were going on about how good/bad last nights race was, but that was months ago! I guess my news server keeps lots of articles, which is good I suppose, but not good if you do this on a zaurus.
I don\'t know about posting though?
It probably won\'t work as neither of us compiled sendmail (too many error\'s)
The only way round this that I can think of involves running slrnpull on a full blown linux box to do the retrieving/sending, and using rsync to keep the two in step.
I Don\'t generally have time to post to groups as I am too busy reading them, but if you want to try a post, use something like alt.test, that\'s what it is there for.
If it works, let me know.
Peter.
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Why did I miss the --recreate? BUt I did go one step further. I set the expire time to one day, then set the Z date one day ahead and ran slrnpull. It spent quite a bit of time deleting all the expired messages ;-) Then I reset everything back to normal, now with a 100 message and 3 day expire and reran it and wound up with about 50 messages total. Saved about 50 megs and I\'m happy. I give the Z a lot of credit though as I was deleting zroadmap maps all the while it was downloading those original 50 megs worth of stuff to make the room. Since it was my first run, I didn\'t want to take a chance on it running out of space. Nice to be able to run more than one program.
20,000? Now there\'s a few hours reading ;-)
I didn\'t even think of sendmail, or the lack of it. But the Z can send mail. I wonder how they do it without sendmail? Now this will have to take some looking into, when I get the time... If I could buy time like I can buy storage, I\'d be a happy person. Nowadays about the only thing I have time for is snow plowing... But now that slrn & slrnpull is working, it would make sense to look into the posting side. Maybe I\'lll finally have to get into the programming side of things... Problem there is that\'s what I do all day long on a win machine. Not something I look forward to for relaxation... But if it grabs my interest!
Rich...
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It posts! I don\'t know how, or care for that matter, but I tried a post to alt.test and it worked just fine...
That\'s after I searched and found the postfix-tls_2.0.15_arm.ipk at killefiz.de and looked through that. 5 megs to install it! I don\'t think it\'s for me...
Then I had a heck of a time with whatever editor slenr was defaulting to. And it didn\'t seem to want to work with textedit... So I went back to killefiz.de and grabbed pico. Now the editor works like a charm and so does the posting. It\'s just a shame that some idiot decided to post 500 multi-meg binaries to alt.test... Had to cacel the retrieve several times before I checked with agent on my deskto... Gotta love newsgroups....
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cool!
I wonder why it was so adament that you have sendmail installed then?
As long as it works, that\'s the main thing.
Now all we need to figure out is how to get it to expire stuff that you have read and marked deleted.
Peter.
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I think sendmail is needed so you can reply by email to a post. If you are replying or posting in a group, slrnpull will post it ok. It would be nice if you could just disable the reply by email feature and not need sendmail when you are compiling it.
Jeff
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sendmail is easy, it\'s all the support files & libraries that sem to make it too large...
Maybe a way to clean up read meassages wouldn\'t be that hard? Add a command function for --compress. You could delete all messages marked as read or deleted, then call the --rebuild function to reconstruct the overview files. At least half of it is already there... Going through all the messages and deleting the marked ones shouldn\'t be too difficult, but may take quite a while to perform...
And all this said from someone who hasn\'t programmed seriously in C for at least 20 years ;-)