ietf-nntp draft-ietf-nntpext-base-17

[Charles Lindsey]

In <yl4r5sskd0.fsf at windlord.stanford.edu> Russ Allbery <rra at stanford.edu> writes:

>Clive D W Feather <clive at demon.net> writes:

>> This is LIST ACTIVE.TIMES, right? In which case the specification
>> doesn't say that it can omit newsgroups arbitrarily.

>In practice, LIST ACTIVE.TIMES omits groups arbitrarily.  (In particular,
>it only holds groups created since the server was first configured, and
>the initial import of an active file is not reflected on the server.
>That's generally what you want, since otherwise the first client that
>connected would be presented with a giant list of new newsgroups.)

Yes, that is my interpretation, and it is what CNews does. The idea is
that you can use it to "catch up" with recently created newsgroups without
having to resynchronize with the complete active file. The whole object
would be defeated if you had to download an ACTIVE.TIMES file that was as
large as the full ACTIVE file.

And if you go away from news for 5 years and expect to resynchronize on
the day you return, then you may be disappointed, because IMO it would be
quite reasonable for newsadmins to prune their ACTIVE.TIMES file from time
to time.

Which reminds me that I ought to be doing that now, because my
active.times file has actually grown bigger than my active file :-( .

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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