Why aren't there any posts older than 13XX days?

[re838uk]

I've used usenet for a couple of years now and everytime I add a group I try and download all the headers. Sometimes I like to display some of the earliest posts that I've downloaded from the headers (so I can get the older stuff first before it dissappears) and despite a storage age of 1500, I've not seen any posts/results that are older than 1400 days. I've managed to get content older than the results obtained from searching by using an nzb from an indexed site, but I wish I didn't have to resort to this. I wonder if newsbin is automatically deleting headers even though it's still possible to download completely and without any problems.

[DThor]

What provider? Giganews only says 1425 days retention, and you can't get something that's older than what they store. Anytime you're on the bleeding edge of anything like this, you can't build a bridge on the promise. There's all sorts of technical issues that crop up with syncing across the farm, etc.

As far as the nzb that has posts older than the spool and it works, you might want to PM that to Quade so he can look at it. I'm a little skeptical Newsbin doesn't work past a limit like this, but anything's possible.

DT

[Quade]

Newsbin has no time limits on headers age but, there's nothing in the NNTP spec that says a server has to have headers as old as the files on the server. Many servers cap headers to 120 million per group which is 2 months on a busy group but, can deliver files out to 1400 days. Servers like that work fine in Newsbin if you use an alternative means of getting headers. Newsbin search or NZB's for instance.

Tomorrow, Giganews could say "hell with 1400 days, we're only going to have 2 months worth of headers" and that would be perfectly acceptable within the NNTP spec.

So, the fact you can download files older then the headers on the server is really not particularly unusual.

[re838uk]

What provider? Giganews only says 1425 days retention, and you can't get something that's older than what they store. Anytime you're on the bleeding edge of anything like this, you can't build a bridge on the promise. There's all sorts of technical issues that crop up with syncing across the farm, etc.

As far as the nzb that has posts older than the spool and it works, you might want to PM that to Quade so he can look at it. I'm a little skeptical Newsbin doesn't work past a limit like this, but anything's possible.

DT

I understand that the service provider can have a limit on the age of headers, but since I am downloading the headers on my computer and I imagine to a stored location within the config folder, that some of the headers that may no longer be kept by the providers can possibly still be retained by newsbin and used. So even if Astraweb isn't keeping headers past a certain point, I am and those headers are prefixed to the other headers at the cut off point. Is this how it works at the moment?

[Quade]

Well, you might want to set your storage age to 2000. Then watch the headers grow.