Wayne Davison <trn@clari.net>

> I am running a Linux system that occassionally connects to the
> University's machine so I can read news or mail. This is a 14.4Kbps
> SLIP connection.
>
> I notice that when trn starts up it reads the entire active file,
> which is over 400K long. Also, when I then post news, the Pnews
> script seems to want to do the same thing, as well as read the
> newsgroups file. Is there some way to avoid this? Maybe point
> trn at an older active file (or is this a really bad idea?)

Yeah, this is a drag over a slip line.  Version 3.6 supports a new
server command to grab the active file in smaller chunks (as small as
one newsgroup) which will improve this if your server upgrades their
nntp server to either nntp-1.5.12 (scheduled for release soon), INN 1.5
(ask Rich Salz for a release date), or a slightly-patched INN 1.4 (ask
Wayne Davison <trn@clari.net> for the patch).

If you post from within trn Pnews should be sharing the active file that
trn grabbed.  If it's not, you probably have a trn/Pnews combination
that is either too old or out of sync.

As for the newsgroups file, people on a slip line would do well to
modify Pnews to point to a local copy that they update from time to time
(at least through version 3.5).

Trn 3.6 has an improved Pnews that defaults to not grabbing the files
(instead getting the info in an interactive session), but since this is
_slower_ over a fast net connection there is an option to do things the
old way that each user can specify.

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