When beginning to read a newsgroup, I see for
example 1200 messages. I press SP to begin reading
and wind up at the last few postings. In checking
.newsrc, I get a 1-1200 indicating that I've read
same. What's up? Also, having trouble producing
list of available newsgroups. I've tried (as per
GREX pocket guide,!more ~news/newsgroups,it was
ignored at the read now prompt.Is ClariNET 
available? I'd like to get familiar reading
before going on to post. Thanks.

12 responses total.

This apparent discrepency is due to the fact that the "lowest article
number" field in the the newsgroup database (aka the "active" file) is
not usually maintained.  This means that when your newsreader enters a
newsgroup for the first time, it has no way of knowing that some of
the articles (in fact, most of them, if it assumes that 1-<max> exist)
aren't there.  Once you enter the newsgroup, of course, it looks for
the articles and discovers that there are some missing.

No, we don't carry the ClariNet groups.  As you may be aware, ClariNet
is a for-pay service, and at the moment I don't think we have the
demand for it.  If we receive enough requests, we might consider
getting it, but keep in mind that ClariNet fees would have to compete
with all the other things we need to spend money on, including a
faster Internet link, more RAM, etc.  I don't think the demand is
there, but then again I only read a couple of ClariNet groups
(Carnegie-Mellon, where I go to college, has a ClariNet feed).

Does a variation on that explain why, when I went to a new newsgroup,
it first said there were 154 articles, but when I entered = to scan
titles, it changed its mind, and said there were none?

That's it exactly, rcurl.  You didn't miss any messages, they had all
been deleted from the disk long ago.

So how many Usenet discussion items do we have now?  >8)

Ooh, one question from #0 that wasn't answered, and I've been getting
a lot of questions about it from "write help" - where do we keep the
list of active newsgroups on Grex?

Sorry if I violated form by posting new Usenet item. ;) As
a newbie I'm struggling to get with the net ASAP per time
I have now. I'd like to support GREX unobstrusively, and
help where I can. One suggestion: Would it make sense to have
a separate conf. for such basics as Usenet,E-mail,FTP,etc.
Thanks "unterminably"

In a sense, that's what THIS conference is intended to be.  I know Valerie's
working on restarting it, but in this case (as opposed to almost all other
conferences) it would be nice for a restart to involve a lot of pulling-
together & reorganizing.  I think that's what she's doing, & it's incredibly
time-consuming.  (The internet conference is the other place for questions
about the particular topics you mention.  If it had had as much activity
as this one, I think it would be due for a restart with similar motives.)

Seems like popcorn duzitall!

To add to what Dave said - the internet conference is divided into
the different internet modalities, plus other topics. I don't know
offhand, however, whether this item is duplicated there. Might be
worthwhile copying and appending this discussion to an item there, if
a link would be redundant.

The active file currently lives in /usr/inn/ctl/active, I think.
This is liable to move around without warning, though, since
newsreaders and such really aren't supposed to know about that
path.

Re #7: it does seem that way.  She's FW of this conference, having failed
to convince anyone else to help; and also staff.  And the staff is rather
heavily overloaded.

This response has been erased.

That's true - if you ask. So, don't ask  8-@.

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