News being silly.

[Dr Peter Young]

Has the news server been misbehaving today? This morning I couldn't
connect at all for an hour or so ("Access to server denied"), then it
went through a phase of "sticking", usually when it got to c.s.a.apps.
Next connection it downloaded the list of all available groups, then
quit without downloading messages. For the next two fetches, it
downloaded the list again (praises be for broadband!), and then
fetched the groups. Now it's back to normal again.

The status page just says "news is currently unavailable", which is no
longer true, I'm grateful to say. Further to recent comments, I would
say that the availability of usenet is alone worth the price of
Orpheus to me, but odd things do seem to happen every now and then. At
one time status announcements from Orpheus came as an RSS feed, which
I, for one, found very useful. Would it be possible for this to be
reinstated? This would save the lazy amongst us from having to go to
the status page, and would also save the impatient among us from
wondering what has happened, and encourage us to be patient. :-)

With best wishes,

Peter.

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Dr Peter Young
Has the news server been misbehaving today?

Yes!

Post by Dr Peter Young
This morning I couldn't connect at all for an hour or so ("Access to
server denied"), then it went through a phase of "sticking", usually when
it got to c.s.a.apps. Next connection it downloaded the list of all
available groups, then quit without downloading messages. For the next
two fetches, it downloaded the list again (praises be for broadband!),
and then fetched the groups. Now it's back to normal again.

I'm not entirely convinced it's normal again actually. Something decidedly
odd was happening this morning, and I suspected someone trying to hack our
news server, or even trying to use it as a feed for their own news server
somewhere - as there was an excessive number of simultaneous connections.

I was first alerted to something "being up" when our newsfeed supplier in
the US emailed me to say that we were using over 90% of our bandwidth
allocation which struck me as odd for a Saturday morning, especially as I
don't think we've ever gone above about 40% in the two years since we
started.

Thus, I started to nose around....

I was also trying to work out why some newsgroups would cause the whole
thing to stall and thought that perhaps the pointers on the server had got
confused somehow (the server works a bit like a super-duper sized Voyager,
in that it will cache all articles locally (at Orpheus) and serve them to
people when requested. Thus, it has to keep indexes of all newsgroups in a
similar way to your news client.

Anyway, being not entirely sure what was happening, I decided to shut down
the server, grab a backup of the latest version and re-compile the whole
thing from the source code. After an initial panic when the 'make' command
repeatedly threw a wobbly (caused by a symlink pointing to an out of date
file!) I re-compiled and re-installed the binaries which is why it appears
to be working ok at the moment. I'll have to update the status page!

Post by Dr Peter Young
longer true, I'm grateful to say. Further to recent comments, I would
say that the availability of usenet is alone worth the price of Orpheus
to me, but odd things do seem to happen every now and then.

Glad to hear it. Our Usenet feed costs a non insignificant amount! :-)

However, as explained in a message last week, news is very hit and miss -
not that our feed, or our server, is unreliable but more because of the
nature of Usenet.

Basically, there are over 100,000 newsgroups spanning all nature of
subjects from the obscure, educational, technical, disgusting, depraved and
surreal. Anyone can post a message to anyone of them. They get spam, abuse,
trolls, adverts and pretty much anyone anywhere can post anything they want
from anywhere, without censorship or identification.
Usenet is a true anarchic, un-regulated wasteland if you like.

To this end, servers have to be very resiliant to attack, abuse and general
corrupted, malformed or just invalid news messages originating from
anywhere. Generally, duff or corrupted messages get deleted or just skipped
over and ignored, but every so often one can effectively throw a spanner in
the works - and it's difficult to track down, simply because it's like
looking for a needle in a haystack - imagine 1000s of messages posted to
some individual newsgroups alone in a day, then imagine over 100,000
newsgroups - and our server can potentially cache *any* one of them....

Thus, at times I'm surprised Usenet works as well as it does.

Anyway, to get back to the point, I decided to just zap the entire cache
and restart the news server with a nice empty portion of Usenet, which is
probably why Newshound wanted to download a new list of newsgroups when you
first connected, simply because I'd zapped everything at the server end.

Post by Dr Peter Young
At one time status announcements from Orpheus came as an RSS feed, which
I, for one, found very useful. Would it be possible for this to be
reinstated?

They can be. Only reason I don't update my RSS feeds (and I have loads on
various sites) is that I've not found a decent RISC OS RSS reader, so
wasn't sure if anyone actually used them. I'll update them next time I
update the status.

Paul
(feeling a bit knackered from working since 5am)

[Dr Peter Young]

On 23 Jun 2007 Paul Vigay

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Dr Peter Young
Has the news server been misbehaving today?

[snip helpful and comprehensive explanations of this morning's
problems]

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Dr Peter Young
At one time status announcements from Orpheus came as an RSS feed, which
I, for one, found very useful. Would it be possible for this to be
reinstated?

They can be. Only reason I don't update my RSS feeds (and I have loads on
various sites) is that I've not found a decent RISC OS RSS reader, so
wasn't sure if anyone actually used them. I'll update them next time I
update the status.

An RSS fetcher is an integral part of Hermes, which a lot of us use in
NetFetch and a few use stand-alone; it fetches RSS feeds every time
news is fetched, or can fetch RSS fees separately. I for one find it
very useful, and would be grateful if your feed were to be reinstated.

Post by Paul Vigay
Paul
(feeling a bit knackered from working since 5am)

And many thanks from us all I'm sure.

With best wishes,

Peter.

[Ben Crick]

[snip] They get spam, abuse,
trolls, adverts and pretty much anyone anywhere can post anything they
want from anywhere, without censorship or identification.
Usenet is a true anarchic, un-regulated wasteland if you like.

Just like MI5 and its "persecution" of newsgroups?

I wish we could zap that paranoid maniac who floods the NGs with his
whining. If he has a genuine gripe, there are courts and there are
solicitors he can consult.

Ben

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Ben Crick
Just like MI5 and its "persecution" of newsgroups?
I wish we could zap that paranoid maniac who floods the NGs with his
whining. If he has a genuine gripe, there are courts and there are
solicitors he can consult.

That's nothing compared to what's been going on on sci.crypt recently.

[Dr Peter Young]

Post by Ben Crick

[snip] They get spam, abuse,
trolls, adverts and pretty much anyone anywhere can post anything they
want from anywhere, without censorship or identification.
Usenet is a true anarchic, un-regulated wasteland if you like.

Just like MI5 and its "persecution" of newsgroups?
I wish we could zap that paranoid maniac who floods the NGs with his
whining. If he has a genuine gripe, there are courts and there are
solicitors he can consult.

Now, if you were to use NewsHound (I think it works with Voyager, but
that's going a long way into my past) you could have a line in
NewsHound's GlobalRule file:

*<tab>*<tab>*MI5Victim<tab>*<tab>*<tab>*none

and you would never see these posts again. :-)

With best wishes,

Peter.

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Dr Peter Young
Now, if you were to use NewsHound (I think it works with Voyager, but
that's going a long way into my past) you could have a line in
*<tab>*<tab>*MI5Victim<tab>*<tab>*<tab>*none
and you would never see these posts again. :-)

I was going to ask what newsgroup this is happening on, as I've not seen
any of these messages - but then I checked my Pluto filters and I still
have the following one setup.

FILTER priority 45 active
Subject "*** spam ***"
OR Subj contains "mi5 persecution"
Apply_to: news mail maillists
Action: discard

:-)

[Ben Crick]

Post by Dr Peter Young
Now, if you were to use NewsHound (I think it works with Voyager, but
that's going a long way into my past) you could have a line in
*<tab>*<tab>*MI5Victim<tab>*<tab>*<tab>*none

Thanks Peter; but there's no reference to this in the Manual. 8-(
It's not really a problem.

Ben

[Dr Peter Young]

Post by Ben Crick

Post by Dr Peter Young
Now, if you were to use NewsHound (I think it works with Voyager, but
that's going a long way into my past) you could have a line in
*<tab>*<tab>*MI5Victim<tab>*<tab>*<tab>*none

Thanks Peter; but there's no reference to this in the Manual. 8-(
It's not really a problem.

It's in the StrongHelp manual for NewsHound 1.42 here, but like a lot
of this manual, it's not easy reading. :-(

With best wishes,

Peter.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Post by Ben Crick

[snip] They get spam, abuse,
trolls, adverts and pretty much anyone anywhere can post anything they
want from anywhere, without censorship or identification.
Usenet is a true anarchic, un-regulated wasteland if you like.

Just like MI5 and its "persecution" of newsgroups?
I wish we could zap that paranoid maniac who floods the NGs with his
whining. If he has a genuine gripe, there are courts and there are
solicitors he can consult.

His 'home' appears to be <uk.misc> and unlike some spammers will actually
talk about his posts. It's rather sad as he's obviously ill. And has gone
down the legal route without satisfaction.

But at least he always uses the same headings so very easy to killfile.

[Bill (Adopt)]

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Dr Peter Young
Has the news server been misbehaving today?

Yes!

Post by Dr Peter Young
This morning I couldn't connect at all for an hour or so ("Access to
server denied"), then it went through a phase of "sticking", usually when
it got to c.s.a.apps. Next connection it downloaded the list of all
available groups, then quit without downloading messages. For the next
two fetches, it downloaded the list again (praises be for broadband!),
and then fetched the groups. Now it's back to normal again.

I'm not entirely convinced it's normal again actually.

Just logged on a few minutes ago - and apart from guessing
something must have happened by the 10's of thousands of
ngs Newshound appeared to be picking up, the download
proceeded rapidly, normally and with all expected groups
intact ..no probs! (Of course MI5 is still being persecuted,
but that's another matter)...

So thank you, Paul ..your nosing around has been effective,
at (least until the next time someone or something decides
to attack the system)...

Post by Paul Vigay
Something decidedly
odd was happening this morning,
Thus, I started to nose around....

[..] snip the useful nutshell...

Post by Paul Vigay
Usenet is a true anarchic, un-regulated wasteland if you like.

Well, not altogether a 'wasteland'. ?!:))

The unregulated so-called 'free' heirarchy might readily
respond to that description, but the main heirarchies do
have some standing and some regulation- otherwise Usenet
wouldn't have worked as well as it has done for a couple
of decades plus, to date.. :))

The 'Net's overall ability to resist attack, both physical
and electronic was built 'into' the system right at the start
..which is why no-one 'owns' it, nor will it ever likely become
defunct.

A start for further information regarding Usenet might be
had by subscribing to Usenet groups such as:

news.announce.newusers

which carry information for new (and old!), Users...

As for controlling Usenet, there will always be someone,
somewhere, who will always take exception to the 'Powers Who
Wish To Be' who would care to control we, the Punters. Ask
any still living under the heel of Communist and/or Fascist
'New' or 'Old Guard' - or for that matter any among the present
underground 'net population of the Chinese, (et al, etc etc and
then some)!

Of course 'Freedom' comes at a price ..one of which is
vigilance re those forces who wish to subvert all to their
own ends...

For instance and as I understand it, Usenet is presently
proving remarkably useful to Estonia in assuaging an attack
on their Web-based financial and trading institutions; an
attack apparently instigated at the behest of unnamed higher
level Russian Institutions, (unproveable of course), in the
two countries heated discussions over the siting of the Russian
War Memorial in Tallinn.

As the President of Estonia smilingly remarked, (when asked
if he believed the Russian State was involved in this massive
electronic sabotage), the Estonian Security Services had
considered carefully the possiblity of Lapland being involved,
but had, "..come to the conclusion that this was most unlikely"! ;'))

(For anyone further interested, this and more regarding the
dire economic affect upon Estoniais available is available
on the web through

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6598269.stm

..as well as no doubt various Usenet sources).

Post by Paul Vigay
To this end, servers have to be very resiliant to attack, abuse and general
corrupted, malformed or just invalid news messages originating from
anywhere.

[..]

Post by Paul Vigay
various sites) is that I've not found a decent RISC OS RSS reader, so
wasn't sure if anyone actually used them. I'll update them next time I
update the status.
Paul
(feeling a bit knackered from working since 5am)

..and thank you for your hard work, Paul... :))

Bill ZFC
..at exactly 03h00, the 'next' day.... ;)))

[Stuart]

Post by Bill (Adopt)
(Of course MI5 is still being persecuted,

Personally I wish someone would!