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Header retention ?

Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2004 6:27 pm
by Chapiro
Hi

I searched this forum for an answear, but im not convinced that i found one:-)

I have 3 servers,
one for headers only and two for downloading bodies directly.

My problem is that the header server only has <24 hr retention.
How do i setup NP to keep the headers for xx days, even if they are no longer on the server?

Thx

Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2004 8:51 pm
by slotboxed
Did you try to change the Force Retention setting for that server? It's just a guess on my part, since I've never fiddled with it. It seems logical, however.

Edit:
According to Mike Stammer's Newspro help, page 3, there are two things to check, both on the properties page.

Newsgroups tab:
Retention [range]

Servers tab:
Force Retention

Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2004 9:20 pm
by Chapiro
Hi

Thx for the suggestion.
I've changed my settings so they look like this:

Newsgroups Tab:
Retention [range] = 1-14
The rest = retain
Purge Del Headers = No

Servers Tab (headers server):
Force Retention = 1-14

Does it look ok?
Im pretty new to NP...only installed it yesterday, so forgive me if my question is comon knowledge.

Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2004 12:40 am
by Chapiro
Hmm.. i don't think it's working.

After retrieving new headers i noticed that some of the oldest headers dissapeared :-(

Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2004 8:01 am
by slotboxed
Retention is discussed on the "latest features" page for v2.91 & 2.99. It does not refer to retention on your computer as I had surmised, but rather is concerned with how far back in time Newspro should gather headers from a particular server. For instance, Newsfeeds used to have retention on some specialized servers up to, I don't remember, but I'll guess 60 days. On a first read of a server, you could wipe out an entire days' worth of alloted megabytes just downloading headers.

The only option I can see for you in this situation would be to use the Newsplex proxy to download the headers from that server. Newsplex can be configured to keep keep them as long as you want -- disable deletion of zombies for x number of days (headers for which -- as far as Newsplex can tell, do not have bodies available, if you only use it with that one server; connect your other servers direct to Newspro -- that's what what I would do in your situation). Then you can use NewsPlex as your header-only server. Here's a FAQ page for Newsplex. http://home.pacbell.net/robbie22/NewsPl ... lexFAQ.htm

You can also use an indexing service to get message id's. There are free ones and paid ones.

[shameless-plug]My bookmarklets help you collate the data from one of the free ones.[/shameless-plug]

Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2004 1:32 pm
by bruce73
After retrieving new headers i noticed that some of the oldest headers dissapeared
They still should be in your local database (the length of time governed by the "Track for xx days" option). Try undeleting headers and see if they show up.

Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2004 7:40 pm
by slotboxed
I don't know for sure, but I don't think that would work because the articles are expired on the server and that triggers removing them completely in the program.

Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2004 1:02 am
by bruce73
No kidding. I never knew that, as I've never dealt with a server that had such a short retention. That seems a bit inefficient now, don't you think, with the advent of message IDs and the rest. Has Alex ever addressed this?

Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2004 2:46 pm
by alex
when headers expire on a server they are removed from the newspro database (unless they still present on some other server), if you need to download something after headers expire you can export and then reimport headers in question into the import group, they will last there forever.

if you want to use a server only for downloading headers, there is a version in the development section that allows not to download bodies from certain servers.