Hello folks,

I'm a bit new to slrn, and I've been having this scoring issue for a bit, and haven't been able to figure out where I'm going wrong.

Any scores that I apply to the Xref: or Newsgroups: headers don't seem to work for me at all.

I was using version 1.0.3 on ubuntu 20.04. I saw that there were developer preview versions available, so I updated to the latest version and built from source. But this didn't contain a fix for my issue.

slrn --version gives me:

slrn pre1.0.4-5
* Note: This version is a developer preview.
S-Lang Library Version: pre2.3.3-58
Operating System: Linux

COMPILE TIME OPTIONS:
Backends: +nntp -slrnpull -spool
External programs / libs: -canlock -inews +ssl -uudeview +iconv
Features: +decoding +emphasized_text +end_of_thread +fake_refs +gen_msgid
-grouplens -msgid_cache +piping +rnlock +spoilers -strict_from
Using 64 bit integers for article numbers.

DEFAULTS:
Default server object: nntp
Default posting mechanism: nntp

Below is what's currently in my score file, I added the Google and killfile scores just to see if scoring was working at all, and it is, both of the other two scores work and I'm able to see that articles are killed and/or scored by them. Only the first one does nothing, and I've tried a number of different variations... but this Xref: rule pulled directly from the examples doesn't have
any effect.

I have also tried it with and without prefer_head. I can bring up articles and see that there are multiple colons in the Xref: header as displayed by slrn.

Any ideas? Thanks so much for any help!

score file:
---------------------

[*]
Score: -100
Xref: :.*:

Score: -50
From: Google

Score: =-9999
From: test-user@nospam\.example

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 2021-08-25, Lafe wrote:

I have also tried it with and without prefer_head. I can bring up articles and
see that there are multiple colons in the Xref: header as displayed by slrn.

Any ideas? Thanks so much for any help!

score file:
---------------------

[*]
Score: -100
Xref: :.*:

It looks okay to me, have you looked at the view_scores dialog on an
article you think it should match on? (Default key is 'v'), maybe the
score is being cancelled out...

Tavis.

--
_o) $ lynx lock.cmpxchg8b.com
/\\ _o) _o) $ finger taviso@sdf.org
_\_V _( ) _( ) @taviso

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 2021-08-26, Tavis Ormandy <taviso@gmail.com> wrote:

On 2021-08-25, Lafe wrote:

score file:
---------------------

[*]
Score: -100
Xref: :.*:

It looks okay to me, have you looked at the view_scores dialog on an
article you think it should match on? (Default key is 'v'), maybe the
score is being cancelled out...

Thanks for looking! I didn't know about that view_scores, but I tried it on an article in this newsgroup that had an Xref header that contained two colon ":" characters in its contents, and it told me that the article didn't match on any rules.

I'm guessing that's the root of the problem. It doesn't seem to like that specific regex, or just isn't able to apply it to that header correctly.

You say that it does work for you though? I'm not sure what could be different.

If I add a Newsgroups: rule, and then attempt open a newsgroup, it appears that slrn will download articles automatically to be able to check the rule. But only sometimes. And if it attempts this against a newsgroup with more than about 20 unread articles it says that there's an error and disconnects me and quits/crashes to the command line. That may be something weird with my nntp provider though (newsdemon).

Scoring on Xref or Newsgroups headers isn't a deal breaker, it's just strange and I wish I could figure out why it doesn't work.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 2021-08-26, Lafe wrote:

On 2021-08-26, Tavis Ormandy <taviso@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks for looking! I didn't know about that view_scores, but I tried it on an
article in this newsgroup that had an Xref header that contained two colon ":"
characters in its contents, and it told me that the article didn't match on any
rules.

I'm guessing that's the root of the problem. It doesn't seem to like that specific regex, or just isn't able to apply it to that header correctly.

You say that it does work for you though? I'm not sure what could be different.

Yes, I use rules like this that work fine:

Score: -10 % X-Posted > 3
Xref: :.*:.*:.*:
Score: -10 % X-Posted > 4
Xref: :.*:.*:.*:.*:
Score: -10 % X-Posted > 5
Xref: :.*:.*:.*:.*:.*:

If I add a Newsgroups: rule, and then attempt open a newsgroup, it appears that
slrn will download articles automatically to be able to check the rule. But only sometimes. And if it attempts this against a newsgroup with more than about 20 unread articles it says that there's an error and disconnects me and quits/crashes to the command line. That may be something weird with my nntp provider though (newsdemon).

Hmm, maybe try `set prefer_head 2`? If that fixes it, seems like it is
your provider (Note that scoring will be much slower without overviews,
but maybe that doesn't bother you!).

Scoring on Xref or Newsgroups headers isn't a deal breaker, it's just strange and I wish I could figure out why it doesn't work.

Maybe also verify there is no accidental weird line endings or
something? You could create a fresh scorefile like:

$ printf "Score: -10\nXref: :.*:\n" > scorefile

Tavis.

--
_o) $ lynx lock.cmpxchg8b.com
/\\ _o) _o) $ finger taviso@sdf.org
_\_V _( ) _( ) @taviso

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 2021-08-26, Tavis Ormandy <taviso@gmail.com> wrote:

Hmm, maybe try `set prefer_head 2`? If that fixes it, seems like it is
your provider (Note that scoring will be much slower without overviews,
but maybe that doesn't bother you!).

Thanks for the suggestion! Setting it to prefer_head did fix it, so I agree that
seems to point to an issue with my nntp server. It changed to the behavior I see
with "Newsgroups:" rules, where it wants to download all of the articles to perform the scoring.

So now if I pull more than 15 or 20 articles when I enter a group, slrn says there's an error and "crashes" to the command line saying that it can't recover.
I think this is also likely a weirdness with how it requests the articles and my
news provider killing the connection or something.

I appreciate your help in the troubleshooting! I can live without cumulative scoring on crossposts while I'm using this nntp provider.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

In news.software.readers, Lafe <lafe@lafes.newlafe.net> wrote:

On 2021-08-26, Tavis Ormandy <taviso@gmail.com> wrote:

Hmm, maybe try `set prefer_head 2`? If that fixes it, seems like it is
your provider (Note that scoring will be much slower without overviews,
but maybe that doesn't bother you!).

Thanks for the suggestion! Setting it to prefer_head did fix it, so I
agree that seems to point to an issue with my nntp server. It changed
to the behavior I see with "Newsgroups:" rules, where it wants to
download all of the articles to perform the scoring.

Have you tried to look at the overview records yourself?

Path: [...]
+ feed.usenet.farm!feed.usenet.farm!tr2.eu1.usenetexpress.com!feeder.
+ usenetexpress.com!tr1.iad1.usenetexpress.com!
+ 2a07:8080:119:fe:f19b:d5b2:4545:7979.MISMATCH!news.newsdemon.com!not-
+ for-mail

Newsdemon seems to be using IPv6 without IPv6 reverse names.

Anyway, general method is:

telnet news.newsdemon.com 119
AUTHINFO USER username
AUTHINFO PASS password
LIST overview.fmt
XOVER group.name:articlenum
QUIT

AUTHINFO only used if needed, there's also an "AUTHINFO GENERIC ..."
variation. The overview.fmt file gives the details of what to expect.
The local one here is:

Subject:
From:
Date:
Message-ID:
References:
Bytes:
Lines:
Xref:full
NNTP-Posting-Host:full

That gives the meaning of each line in the output, and the ones marked
"full" will have a header name in front of them, the overs just the
field value.

The XOVER command can get a single article or a range.
XOVER news.software.readers:1000
XOVER news.software.readers:1000-1050

I've heard of bugs in newsreaders with values after the standard
Subject: to Lines: entries that _don't_ have the header name. One
such bug is why this site has "NNTP-Posting-Host:full". I think
it was in Xnews.

So now if I pull more than 15 or 20 articles when I enter a group,
slrn says there's an error and "crashes" to the command line saying
that it can't recover.
I think this is also likely a weirdness with how it requests the
articles and my news provider killing the connection or something.

As someone who never uses slrn, but has a vague interest in nntp
clients, I'm curious what's going on here. I looked into this thread
because I suspected some overview db issues.

Elijah
------
uses trn and perl NNTP module scripts for his news

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> wrote in
news:eli$2108261742@qaz.wtf: <snip>

Have you tried to look at the overview records yourself?

Path: [...]
+
feed.usenet.farm!feed.usenet.farm!tr2.eu1.usenetexpress.com!feeder. +
usenetexpress.com!tr1.iad1.usenetexpress.com! + 2a07:8080:119:fe:f19b:d5b2:4545:7979.MISMATCH!news.newsdemon.com!not-
+ for-mail

Newsdemon seems to be using IPv6 without IPv6 reverse names.

Anyway, general method is:

telnet news.newsdemon.com 119
AUTHINFO USER username
AUTHINFO PASS password
LIST overview.fmt
XOVER group.name:articlenum
QUIT

AUTHINFO only used if needed, there's also an "AUTHINFO GENERIC ..." variation. The overview.fmt file gives the details of what to expect.
The local one here is:

Subject:
From:
Date:
Message-ID:
References:
Bytes:
Lines:
Xref:full
NNTP-Posting-Host:full

That gives the meaning of each line in the output, and the ones marked
"full" will have a header name in front of them, the overs just the
field value.

The XOVER command can get a single article or a range.
XOVER news.software.readers:1000
XOVER news.software.readers:1000-1050

I've heard of bugs in newsreaders with values after the standard
Subject: to Lines: entries that _don't_ have the header name. One
such bug is why this site has "NNTP-Posting-Host:full". I think
it was in Xnews.

So now if I pull more than 15 or 20 articles when I enter a group,
slrn says there's an error and "crashes" to the command line saying
that it can't recover.
I think this is also likely a weirdness with how it requests the
articles and my news provider killing the connection or something.

As someone who never uses slrn, but has a vague interest in nntp
clients, I'm curious what's going on here. I looked into this thread
because I suspected some overview db issues.

Elijah
------
uses trn and perl NNTP module scripts for his news

I'm sorry that I somehow missed your follow-up to my post before. I tried
your suggestion, and I had the following results:

~$ telnet news.newsdemon.com 119
Trying 185.151.13.247...
Connected to nd.tlsusenet.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
200 Welcome (n14.iad1)
AUTHINFO USER **************
381 Proceed with PASS
AUTHINFO PASS **************
281 Hello **************!
LIST overview.fmt
215 Information follows (multi-line)
Subject:
From:
Date:
Message-ID:
References:
Bytes:
Lines:
Xref:full
.
XOVER news.software.readers:1000
400 Unrecognized command
OVER eli$2108231742@qaz.wtf
400 Unrecognized command
OVER news.software.readers:1000
400 Unrecognized command
QUIT
205 Goodbye
Connection closed by foreign host.

I'm guessing the complete lack of support for XOVER/OVER is what was
causing this issue with SLRN, and why prefer-head 2 "sort of" worked.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Lafe

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)