• newslink.js - import PTRs

    From Ash-Fox@VERT to DOVE-Net.Synchronet_JavaS on Fri Nov 16 11:04:00 2007
    Greetings all,

    Recently I've linked my BBS to a rather unreliable news server (there is
    unique groups on there that other news servers don't have). Unfortunately because of it's unreliability I've had a bunch of issues trying to mirror
    all the content, as I keep running into various problems such as:

    - Random disconnects
    - Infinite loop (100000000 branches) detected issue

    To get around the Infinite loop problem, I tried setting at the beginning of newslink.js the following:

    branch_limit = "0";

    Unfortunately, that seems to do nothing at all.

    Whenever a random issue happens, be it disconnection or infinite loop, the message import PTRs are not updated, so, the BBS starts from the beginning
    and ignores a bunch of messages after downloading them as it already has
    them.

    I looked at the sourcecode of where the pointers are retrieved, from my understanding it's from the .snl file in /data/subs/. Unfortunately when I
    open it up, it's in some binary format I don't quite understand. Looking at
    the javascript code, used newslink.js, I'm just not getting how it's set.
    So I can't manually fix the number.

    I've resorted to temporarily hardcoding the PTR number in the newslink.js,
    but I think a better workaround would be updating the PTR number in
    the .snl file everytime a article is downloaded, rather than when the
    entire transaction is complete.

    While I do more or less understand what's going on in newslink.js, I'm
    really confused about what I would need to modify in the file to make this happen and would appreciate help on this. I also consider the fact that
    PTRs aren't updated with every article download is a bug.

    ~Ash-Fox

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  • From Digital Man@VERT to Ash-Fox on Sat Nov 17 16:10:00 2007
    Re: newslink.js - import PTRs
    By: Ash-Fox to DOVE-Net.Synchronet_JavaScript on Fri Nov 16 2007 04:04 pm

    Greetings all,

    Recently I've linked my BBS to a rather unreliable news server (there is unique groups on there that other news servers don't have). Unfortunately because of it's unreliability I've had a bunch of issues trying to mirror all the content, as I keep running into various problems such as:

    - Random disconnects
    - Infinite loop (100000000 branches) detected issue

    To get around the Infinite loop problem, I tried setting at the beginning of newslink.js the following:

    branch_limit = "0";

    Unfortunately, that seems to do nothing at all.

    That's because branch_limit is a property of the 'js' object, so you would want to use:

    js.branch_limit = 0;

    instead.

    Whenever a random issue happens, be it disconnection or infinite loop, the message import PTRs are not updated, so, the BBS starts from the beginning and ignores a bunch of messages after downloading them as it already has them.

    A disconnection will not cause the PTRs to not be updated. Only a JS exception (like the infinite loop detection) would cause that.

    I looked at the sourcecode of where the pointers are retrieved, from my understanding it's from the .snl file in /data/subs/. Unfortunately when I open it up, it's in some binary format I don't quite understand. Looking at the javascript code, used newslink.js, I'm just not getting how it's set.
    So I can't manually fix the number.

    I've resorted to temporarily hardcoding the PTR number in the newslink.js, but I think a better workaround would be updating the PTR number in
    the .snl file everytime a article is downloaded, rather than when the
    entire transaction is complete.

    While I do more or less understand what's going on in newslink.js, I'm really confused about what I would need to modify in the file to make this happen and would appreciate help on this. I also consider the fact that
    PTRs aren't updated with every article download is a bug.

    I'd suggest limiting the number of messages downloaded per execution of newslink.js and that'll avoid the problem altogether with no modification of newslink.js necessary.

    digital man (xbox-live: digitlman)

    Snapple "Real Fact" #96:
    The average American will eat 35,000 cookies in his/her lifetime.
    Norco, CA WX: ---.-øF, --% humidity, NaN mph --- wind, --.-- inches rain/24hrs

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  • From Ash-Fox@VERT to Digital Man on Mon Nov 19 08:02:00 2007
    Digital Man wrote:


    I'd suggest limiting the number of messages downloaded per execution of newslink.js and that'll avoid the problem altogether with no modification
    of newslink.js necessary.


    Thanks for the help.

    ---
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