The AGA Experience 2/agavol2.iso/software/utilities/comms/thor_2.22/thor.faq

Text File | 1996-02-04 | 17KB | 417 lines

The Unofficial d.i.s.a Thor FAQ
===============================

Synopsis: This document is intended for use by Demon Internet customers
who would like to use the Thor package for the Amiga computer. It is
by no means the "be all, end all" and is open for revision by all and
sundry. Simply email me <[e-mail]> with your
revisions and I'll maintain the document and repost it every now and
again. So, although I started this document, I do not own it, but
I'd like to maintain it.

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Contents:
=========

1. About THOR
1.1    What is Thor
1.2    What does Thor require
1.3    Where is Thor to be obtained
1.4    Where do I go for technical support

2. What is a Thor system?
2.1    Will Thor read my old newsbase?
2.2    UUCP or TCP, which is best

3. It deleted some of my uucp files! Help
3.1    It deleted my UUNEWS: newsbase. Why and how do I get it back
3.2    It deleted my mailbox file. Why and how do I get it back
3.3    Some old email keeps reappearing. Why?

4. About newsgroup maintenance.
4.1    I need a list of newsgroups. How.
4.2    How do I subscribe to a newsgroup

5. About news/mail collection and sending
5.1    How do I collect/download news?
5.2    Can I get mail as well as news?
5.3    I get an error when doing a "Get Mail". Why?
5.4    Can I compose mail and news offline?
5.5    NNTP Error adding message!
5.6    It asks me for something to do with PGP, and never sends mail
5.7    A requester pops up every 5 minutes saying "POP GET ERROR"

6. I think I have a corrupt Thor database.
6.1    Where is the Thor database stored?
6.2    Can it be repaired?

7. Binary newsgroups
7.1    Can I uudecode split binaries automatically?
7.2    My uudecode.thor doesn't seem to work

8. How the hell do I get Thor to remember the time when I load it up

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1. About THOR
=============

Thor is the Norse God of Thunder, a figure of might who may now appear
on your Workbench, courtesy of a group of Amiga coders from Norway.

1.1. What is Thor?

Thor is Shareware. It is well worth taking the effort to set it up
well, and then register it with the authors.

Thor is an offline message database management system. For your
standard Demon setup, it is used as a offline Usenet/EMail package,
although it supports a lot more, like Fidonet echoes. Thor uses an
internal database management system to store the conference data,
which can be referenced very quickly for various methods of searching,
threading etc.

Thor supports the Usenet protocol called NNTP internally, without
requiring external nntpclient programs. Thor also supports mail
sending via SMTP, and POP3 mail retrieving.

Thor also has the most attractive Graphical User Interface I have ever
seen, on any newsreader on any platform!

1.2. What does Thor require?

Thor requires an Amiga equipped with V37 or above of the operating system.
It consumes 970Kb of memory when running on my machine at least, and 1.9Mb
of disk space. Thor does not provide it's own communications path, so in
order to work with a Demon account, it requires some form of TCP/IP stack,
like AmiTCP.

1.3 Where is Thor to be obtained?

The current version of Thor is version 2.1
Thor can be directly obtained from the authors, from their web site
http://www.cs.uit.no/~kjelli/thor. It is also available from the Aminet in
thor21_bbs.lha     comm/mail   70K+BBS archive for THOR 2.1 (QWK/FIDO/BLUE/ABBS
thor21_inet.lha    comm/mail   81K+Internet archive for THOR 2.1 (TCP/SOUP/UUCP
thor21_main.lha    comm/mail  774K+Offline Reader for BBS/Internet usage, main

***IMPORTANT***

There are 2 modules of Thor which have bugs in them. They are utnet.library
and ParseUUCP. The bugs include freezes in news collection, and machine
crashes when parsing large mailbox files or base64 encoded mail.
The Thor team will release big fixes for these Real Soon Now.

1.4 Where do I get technical support?

Thor technical support is available in a multitude of places, including
demon.ip.support.amiga, but the most official place is the Thor mailing
list, run by the authors. To join the mailing list, send an email to
[e-mail] with no subject and a message body containing
the message "SUB thor-l firstname surname".

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2. What is a Thor system?
=========================

A Thor system is another name for a database, since Thor can support
several at the same time, containing messages from different on-line
systems, like Usenet and Fidonet.

A Thor database is a collection of binary files which contain all the
messages for one particular system. The database files are in Thor's
own particular database format, and don't really make sense to other
applications. Even if you read through them with a text editor, they
won't make much sense as they are binary files, not text files.

A Thor database is where all your news downloads from Demon will go.
Because of this, your usual news collection method should be disabled,
whatever you use, nntpclient or plink, whatever.

2.1 Will Thor read my old newsbase?

Yes it will. If any files are found under your UUNEWS: directory, they
can be parsed into the Thor database with a small Thor utility already
provided. It is called ParseUUCP, and is located in the Thor/bin
directory. This utility requires your newsbase to be previously unbatched,
i.e stored in a seperate file per article. Thor will not parse in a
batched newsfile.

Say for example you have a Thor system called "Usenet", and you have
a UUCP style newsbase in uunews: left over from when you previously
used Tin or Grn, you can move this newsbase into your Thor system.
The command is :- ParseUUCP Usenet Delete
Warning: Once moved into Thor, a newsbase is very difficult to convert
back into the old uucp style format.

2.2 UUCP or TCP, which is best?

Thor can handle Usenet with system types of UUCP or TCP. As to which one
is best, is up to you.

2.2.1 The TCP System type

The TCP system type handles it's own news collection. It has an extra
module called "ConnectThor" which handles Usenet collection either by
your subscribed newsgroups, or by choosing articles from any newsgroup
the server contains, just like Newsagent does.

Thor 2.1 has improved news collection via NNTP, which gives a much improved
data transfer rate over the previous version, by setting "sockets" in
ConfigTCP to around 3 or 4.

2.2.2. The UUCP System type

The UUCP system type requires external programs (like INetUtils or
nntpclient) to collect news. This news should be unbatched into
the uunews: directory ready for Thor to parse it into it's database.

In general, the TCP system type is preferable, because the ConnectThor
program is the only program you need to use to Send/Get News/Mail.

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3. It deleted some UUCP files! Help!
====================================

It is supposed to. Any unbatched uucp news in the uunews: directory is
parsed into Thor's database and the original uucp version is deleted.
This also applies to your mailbox file in uumail: as the mail is read
into Thor's database.

3.1 It deleted my UUNEWS: newsbase. Why? and how do I get it back.

Thor can either collect it's own news, or have an external NNTP client
collect news for it. If Thor detects that news has been collected by
an external program (i.e there are files under uunews:), it will
parse them into Thor.

If it did not delete them, it would re-read them every time you ran
Thor, so you would have duplicate articles in Thor.

As to how you get them back; take out your most recent backup tape..... :-)
It is possible to save individual messages from Thor from the file menu,
but that's a long drawn out method. The better option is to use the Arexx
support of Thor, using the SaveRange Arexx macro.

3.2 It deleted my mailbox file. Why? and how do I get it back.

In a similar fashion, Thor depends on an external SMTP client to receive
mail into your UUmail: mailbox file. When you go into your Thor system,
the mailbox will be parsed into Thor's database, and deletes the mailbox
file. The mail is now stored inside Thor.

3.3 Some old email keeps reappearing. Why?

The mail reading program that you used to use may have made backup copies
of your mailbox, with a similar filename, but with a ".old" or ".saved"
extension. Look in UUMAIL: and delete the old mailbox file. This will stop
Thor from reading that file every time.

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4. About newsgroup maintenance.
===============================

In Thor, a newsgroup is referenced as a "Conference". To have a new
Conference appear in your Thor system, all that has to happen is for
articles from that group to be present, and Thor will automatically
create the Conference for you.

An example of this is if there is any Email waiting for you in your
mailbox; Thor will parse the mail, and if the Conference "EMail" does
not exist, it will be created for you.

If you are running a TCP system type, you can make use of the Event Commands
menu, where there are several options.

4.1. I need a list of newsgroups. How?

Before subscribing to newsgroups is possible, the list has to be dowloaded.
This is possible by making use of the 'Get Conflist' menu option, under
the Event Commands menu. This in itself will not cause an
immediate download; but the next time "Send Events" is selected from
ConnectThor, the list will be downloaded.

4.2. How do I susbscribe to a newsgroup?

Even if the name of a newsgroup is listed in your Thor System, that does
not mean that you are subscribed to it. The ConnectThor system has to be
told to subscribe to a newsgroup, from inside Thor; select "Join Conf"
from the Event Commands menu, and then choose the newsgroups you require
from the large list of the groups carried by the remote news server.
The next time "Send Events" is selected from ConnectThor, the groups
will be subscribed to.

In the newsgroup selector, multiselection (ie shift and left mouse button)
is quite happily supported. Simply choose all the groups you wish to read
whilst holding down the shift key, then click on OK.

Groups can be unsubscribed in a similar fashion by using "Resign Conf"
from inside Thor.

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5. About news/mail collection and sending
=========================================

This applies to the Thor TCP system type only.

5.1    How do I collect/download news?

This is done from the ConnectThor program. The first time you ever do
this, you should click on Config TCP first, to configure the name
of your news server, and mailserver. Demon users can use news.demon.co.uk,
distort or disrupt for news purposes, and post.demon.co.uk for email.
There is also a time stamp option, which tells Thor how far back in the
past to collect the initial news download. The first time you evere use
Thor to collect news, it is recommended to set this date back about 3 days,
then click on "Set". In this way, a little bit of news will be downloaded
initially.

After doing the initial setup, it is now possible to click on "Get News"
to collect your subscribed newsgroups. This news is automatically added
to the Thor database, and will be available to read in Thor. This has
advantages: no messy unbatching; no hard disk fragmentation by creating
thousands of tiny news files, it all goes into one great news data file.

5.2    Can I get mail as well as news?

Only if you have a POP3 mail account with Demon. Clicking on "Get Mail"
from ConnectThor logs onto the POP3 server with your POP3 password
and collects the mail, deleting it from the POP3 server.

SMTP mail cannot be collected this way, it is automatically sent to
your machine when you dial up Demon.

5.3    I get an error when doing a "Get Mail". Why?

"Get Mail" is for POP3 mail accounts. Do you have a POP3 mail account?
If so, is your POP3 password configured correctly in ConfigTCP?

5.4    Can I compose mail and news offline?

Yes, that is one of the ideas behind Thor. Use "Enter" to compose new
news or mail, or use "Reply" to reply to news or mail. You then write
the articles to be posted, which are stored in an event queue.

You can list the events in the queue by pressing 'v' inside Thor. These
events will be sent out the next time you go into ConnectThor and do
a 'Send Events'

5.5    NNTP Error adding message!

This is a problem that occurs if the article does not comply to the
Usenet standard. An example of this is some Usenet spams which have
badly composed headers. These spams also cause other news clients to
have problems as well. To get round it, move the timestamp along past
the article in question.

5.6    It asks me for something to do with PGP, and never sends mail

This occurs if you accidentally select Encrypt or Sign when composing
messages. To cure it, use the 'v' key in Thor to view the Event List,
and find the offending event. To turn the PGP encryption off, select
the event, and click on 'Edit Data'. Deselect the encryption and the
next time you Send Events, it should work.

5.7    A requester pops up every 5 minutes saying POP GET ERROR

Your ConnectThor commodity is set to check your POP3 mail account every
5 minutes for new mail. You should kill the copy of ConnectThor that is
running with the Exchange commodity, or use the Project/Quit menu in
ConnectThor to quit. Click on ConnectThor to activate the Icon, then
select the Icons/Information menu from Workbench. Then, change the
CHECKDELAY=5 tooltype to (CHECKDELAY=5) i.e put brackets round it to
make ConnectThor ignore the check feature.

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6. I think I have a corrupt Thor database.

This is possible, Thor is a very complex system. Databases can be repaired.
Please note, before repairing a Thor database, you should make a backup
copy of it!

6.1    Where is the Thor database stored?

A Thor database is a lot of large files in a directory somewhere. To find
out where it is on your hard disk, in a shell type :

cd `getenv Thor/BBSDataPath`
(note the back quotes NOT forward quotes)

and do a list. There is the Thor database, in the subdirectory BBS0. If
you have more than one database, it will be stored in BBSx, where x is
a different number.

6.2    Can it be repaired?

Yes. A script can be created to repair a Thor database for you. Create
a script called S:Validate to contain the following

.key system/a
.bra {
.ket }
avail flush
cd `getenv Thor/ThorPath`
bin/BaseManager VALIDATE {system}
rx rexx/BBSRead/CheckDataBase.br {system} DELETE
bin/PackBBS {system}

and run it with the Execute command. It will take a while for large
news databases, but it sorts out most problems. Make a backup copy
of the Thor database before running it! When running the script,
take note that it requires one argument; the name of the system you
wish to repair.

MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR THOR SYSTEM BEFORE RUNNING THIS.

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7. Binary newsgroups

UUencoded files from binary groups can be uudecoded automatically by
Thor, without you having to join the files together. This is possible
with the use of a couple of ARexx scripts provided with Thor.

7.1    Can I uudecode split binaries automatically?

There is an Arexx script called UUdecodeConf.Thor that does this. It
is a new program and therefore not included with Thor. It is available
from the Thor Web Page on http://www.cs.uit.no/~kjelli/thor

7.2    My uudecode.thor doesn't seem to work

UUDecode.Thor is an Arexx script that depends on an external uudecoder
to work. The script works with UUxt, UUOut, and UUfast, and you have
to edit the script to tell it which one to use. There is a line at the
top of the script which has the name of the uudecoder.
Here is what the line you have to change looks like, and of course, you
must obtain the uudecoder program from the aminet.

uudecoder = "uuxt"    /* may be: uuout, uufast or uuxt    */

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8. How the hell do I get Thor to remember the time when I load it up

"Here's a good'un. How the hell do I get Thor to remember the time when I load
it up? I've always got to set the time in the systemconfig. Or maybe I don't
need to set it. I dunno, messages stay, and sometimes they dissapear but
sometime they don't go for about a week when they shoulda a while ago, maybe.
  Oh god, John RIGHT THAT FAQ."

Hee hee! ;-)  When you get your news, your Thor newstamp is updated for you.
You don't have to change it yourself!

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DISCLAIMER: this document is not intended to replace the Thor documentation.
It is here to make the initial steps less daunting. If you get into problems
ask somebody, they may know! If usage of this document fastformats your hard
drive, think yourself blessed that you now have more free diskspace! ;-)

Love life and Norse Gods with Big Hammers!