Microsoft KB Archive/229879

= XFOR: MCIS NNTP Multiple Subscriptions May Not All Be Processed =

Article ID: 229879

Article Last Modified on 10/28/2006

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Commercial Internet System 2.0

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This article was previously published under Q229879



SYMPTOMS
Not all subscriptions are processed as expected. Some messages are not pulled into some newsgroups.

Subscriptions are configured for a particular news feed object in the NNTP service, and refer to a newsgroup or group of newsgroups that this Microsoft Commercial Internet System (MCIS) computer subscribes to.

If a subscription list is set up as follows

microsoft.public.masm

microsoft.public.mcis.*

microsoft.public.windowsnt.*

when the "microsoft.public.masm" group has no new postings, new postings to the newsgroups listed after it in the list are not requested.

NOTE: Many providers simply accept all groups from their upstream news server, and are not affected by this problem. Some providers may accept limited newsgroups (only English-language newsgroups for example), and may be affected by this problem.



CAUSE
When the MCIS 2.0 NNTP service receives a response to the newnews ... command with no list of articles, the place in the subscription list appears to be lost, and the list starts over.



WORKAROUND
Instead of many small subscription lists such as

microsoft.public.masm

microsoft.public.mcis.*

microsoft.public.windowsnt.*

create larger lists such as

microsoft.public.masm,microsoft.public.mcis.*,microsoft.public.windowsnt.*

While this does not guarantee the above situation will not occur, it considerably reduces the likelihood. If all groups can be placed in a single subscription, this workaround ensures that all those groups are updated.

RFC 977 indicates that the length of the newnews ... command should not exceed 512 bytes in length, and some servers may fail if a line longer than 512 characters is sent. With this in mind, the length of the subscription should be at most approximately 450 characters.



MORE INFORMATION
The "microsoft.public.masm" newsgroup is a quiet newsgroup and is handy to use for testing. Configure a news feed (to msnews for example) and create multiple subscriptions, the first of which is microsoft.public.masm. After several scheduled pulls, view the logs, and notice the responses from the news server indicating the newsgroups being pulled.

When there are no new postings to microsoft.public.masm, the same group is tried again and again until there is a posting.

Next, configure the news feed to have a single subscription to multiple newsgroups, and notice the difference in the responses.

Keywords: kbprb KB229879

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