Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!kuhub.cc.ukans.edu!anu-news!list
From: munnari!anu.anu.oz.au!gih900@CSC1.ANU.OZ.AU (Geoff Huston)
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: RE: notation "-- Title not obtained --"
Message-ID: <9002070013.AA26897@uunet.uu.net>
Date: 7 Feb 90 16:04:28 GMT
Sender: ANU-NEWS Discussion <ANU-NEWS@NDSUVM1.BITNET>
Reply-To: Geoff Huston <munnari!anu.anu.oz.au!gih900@CSC1.ANU.OZ.AU>
Lines: 24

>Well, ANU News 5.9c finally got done updating, with 18360 blocks for the
>NEWS.ITEMS file and 111 blocks for NEWS.GROUPS.  Most everything seems to
>work, but I am puzzled by multiple "-- Title not obtained --" messages where
>subject lines usually are located.  None of these messages can be reached from
>the UNIX server, and I checked several of them again 'rn' on the UNIX machine
>to see whether they didn't have titles.  Is this an artifact I'll have to
>live with?  Or is something still not quite "right" about the whole setup?
     
This is caused by probably a link which is not totally reliable.
     
NEWS firstly checks the remote server using a NEWNEWS command to pull over the
identifiers of all items on the remote system. It then collects these
identifiers and adds them to the local database with a "title not obtained"
subject line.
     
It then consults the server in a second pass and using the XHDR command (or
HEAD if XHDR is not supported) to get the subject line, etc.
     
Even if this breaks, the first user who actually collects the item (a read)
should cause the entry to be updated with the correct information.
     
I will relook at the code and see if there are outstanding problems.
     
Geoff