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  • How to remove this odd newsgroup?

    From Nigel Reed@21:1/5 to All on Wed Apr 5 06:31:35 2023
    When looking at my active file in vi I am seeing this...

    free.fr.test.ÏÏ<84>Ï<86>-8 0000000000 0000000001 y

    I don't seem to be able to get rid of it with ctlinnd rmgroup.

    I tried create a script file to do it, obviously replacing <84> by
    using ^Vx84 and ^Vx86 in vi but to no avail. Any suggestions?

    Thanks,

    --
    End Of The Line BBS - Plano, TX
    telnet endofthelinebbs.com 23

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  • From =?UTF-8?Q?Julien_=c3=89LIE?=@21:1/5 to All on Wed Apr 5 17:53:26 2023
    Hi Nigel,

    When looking at my active file in vi I am seeing this...

    free.fr.test.ÏÏ<84>Ï<86>-8 0000000000 0000000001 y

    I don't seem to be able to get rid of it with ctlinnd rmgroup.

    Looks like a problem of encoding. The ctlinnd rmgroup command should
    provide the same newsgroup name as the one in your active file.
    If your terminal uses a different encoding than the one of the active
    file you're reading, then some characters may be encoded twice, and INN
    does not find the given newsgroup name on command line.

    --
    Julien ÉLIE

    « Traversez la rivière en foule, le crocodile ne vous mangera pas. »
    (proverbe malgache)

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  • From Marc SCHAEFER@21:1/5 to [email protected] on Wed Apr 5 16:25:34 2023
    On Wed, 05 Apr 2023 17:53:26, Julien �LIE <[email protected]d> wrote:
    free.fr.test.��<84>�<86>-8 0000000000 0000000001 y

    I don't seem to be able to get rid of it with ctlinnd rmgroup.

    Looks like a problem of encoding. The ctlinnd rmgroup command should
    provide the same newsgroup name as the one in your active file.
    If your terminal uses a different encoding than the one of the active
    file you're reading, then some characters may be encoded twice, and INN
    does not find the given newsgroup name on command line.

    news% ctlinnd rmgroup $(awk '/^free\.fr\.test\./ { print $1; }' /var/lib/news/active)
    Ok

    did the job for me.

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  • From Nigel Reed@21:1/5 to [email protected] on Wed Apr 5 14:51:58 2023
    On Wed, 5 Apr 2023 17:53:26 +0200
    Julien ÉLIE <[email protected]d> wrote:

    Hi Nigel,

    When looking at my active file in vi I am seeing this...

    free.fr.test.ÏÏ<84>Ï<86>-8 0000000000 0000000001 y

    I don't seem to be able to get rid of it with ctlinnd rmgroup.

    Looks like a problem of encoding. The ctlinnd rmgroup command should provide the same newsgroup name as the one in your active file.
    If your terminal uses a different encoding than the one of the active
    file you're reading, then some characters may be encoded twice, and
    INN does not find the given newsgroup name on command line.


    I hate encoding with a passion...can't we all just get along! My active
    file had fileencoding set to latin1 and my script to delete the group
    was utf-8. Once I changed that to latin1 it worked. Thanks for the hint.

    It's amazing how much crap has built up in the active group over the
    years, not so much the obsolete groups, but groups that have invalid characters, end in a period, some group names are truncated, etc. While
    my server isn't perfect, I've tried to clean a lot of stuff up.

    I've removed all the binary and picture groups I could identify, any
    groups that don't contain a-z A-z 0-9 or +-_, those with a period at
    the end, some groups with truncated names, pedo groups (except those
    naming pedophiles) most of the alt.hipcrime and numerous variations
    thereof.

    My peers are welcome to pull my list and sync with it, and I especially appreciate feedback to fix anything else that's spotted. I will be
    running the scripts to cleanup obsolete/incorrect groups as and when
    they get identified. Anyone else interested is also welcome to a copy.

    Also, I have yet to update the newsgroups file but I should have that
    done this evening.

    newsfeed.endofthelinebbs.com port 119

    Note, I have a lot of blocked netblocks due to abuse from shared
    hosting/vps providers. If you find you're blocked, drop me a note at
    sysop at the endoftheline and I'll put an exception rule in for you.

    OK, that's all :)

    Thanks,




    --
    End Of The Line BBS - Plano, TX
    telnet endofthelinebbs.com 23

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  • From Adam W.@21:1/5 to Nigel Reed on Wed Apr 5 19:37:12 2023
    Nigel Reed <[email protected]> wrote:

    When looking at my active file in vi I am seeing this...

    free.fr.test.??<84>?<86>-8 0000000000 0000000001 y

    Maybe this will do the trick?

    echo -ne "%s" | xargs -0 ctlinnd rmgroup

    Where %s is a group name with all non-printable characters replaced with
    their hex equivalents (\x84 for example).

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Russ Allbery@21:1/5 to Nigel Reed on Wed Apr 5 13:30:59 2023
    Nigel Reed <[email protected]> writes:

    It's amazing how much crap has built up in the active group over the
    years, not so much the obsolete groups, but groups that have invalid characters, end in a period, some group names are truncated, etc. While
    my server isn't perfect, I've tried to clean a lot of stuff up.

    Yeah, the code that maintains the ftp.isc.org active file goes to quite
    some lengths to try to filter out all that crap. But not all the other
    spite groups and random personal insults disguised as group names and
    similar junk.

    (Personally, I just don't carry free.* at all and only add alt.* groups
    that look specifically interesting, but I've never liked free-for-all
    group creation so this probably isn't news to anyone.)

    My peers are welcome to pull my list and sync with it, and I especially appreciate feedback to fix anything else that's spotted. I will be
    running the scripts to cleanup obsolete/incorrect groups as and when
    they get identified. Anyone else interested is also welcome to a copy.

    You may find the logic in control-archive worth reviewing, although it's
    not as comprehensive as what you've mentioned.

    https://github.com/rra/control-archive/blob/master/scripts/process-control#L256

    --
    Russ Allbery ([email protected]) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

    Please post questions rather than mailing me directly.
    <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/faqs/questions.html> explains why.

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  • From Nigel Reed@21:1/5 to Adam W. on Wed Apr 5 18:18:21 2023
    On Wed, 5 Apr 2023 19:37:12 -0000 (UTC) [email protected]d (Adam W.) wrote:

    Nigel Reed <[email protected]> wrote:

    When looking at my active file in vi I am seeing this...

    free.fr.test.??<84>?<86>-8 0000000000 0000000001 y

    Maybe this will do the trick?

    echo -ne "%s" | xargs -0 ctlinnd rmgroup

    Where %s is a group name with all non-printable characters replaced
    with their hex equivalents (\x84 for example).


    Thanks but it's sorted.
    --
    End Of The Line BBS - Plano, TX
    telnet endofthelinebbs.com 23

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