Pan Date header preference setting for time zone

On Sun, 03 Jul 2016 22:35:33 +0000, Whiskers wrote:

Certainly if the user doesn't supply a Date header the server will, just
as happens with the Message-ID header. If the server doesn't think the
user-supplied Date header is 'correct' then it should either reject the
post or insert a separate header of its own, 'NNTP-Posting-Date'. Some
servers always insert that header.

Just by way of noting my experience, the aioe server did a *lot* of syntax
and logic checking. Whenever I telneted in a date the newsserver didn't
like, it gave a very clear error message (e.g., time off too much, or
invalid syntax).

I resorted to cutting and pasting, which, as you can imagine, is
absolutely painful in the Windows DOS command line.

When I had a dial-up internet connection, I used to post via a local
caching proxy news-server (Hamster or Leafnode), dialing up to log in to
the news-server at regular intervals or when I'd got a batch of posts to
send. That could result in my posts appearing with a wide range of Date
headers (several hours sometimes) but with NNTP-Posting-Date headers all
at the same time or within a minute or so. Keen eyed geeky readers
sometimes commented on this. I believe my local proxy server (running
on my own computer) was inserting the Date headers when I wrote the
articles; the NNTP-Posting-Date was being supplied by the upstream
server I was posting to.

In summary, the aioe server did what I would have expected it to do (at
least in hindsight).

1) If I omitted the date header, "something" put a date header in of the
format "+0000 (UTC)".

2) If I added a valid date header, aioe faithfully reproduced whatever I
typed, whether I used a plus or minus and whatever comment I added
thereafter, or whether I omitted the TZ offset and comment.

I will repeat I only know my results - and I don't know how this stuff
works, but my *guess* goes *against* what everyone has said, so far.

It's my *guess* that Pan inserts nothing for the date.

That would at least explain why Mixmin has a different resulting header
than netfront and aioe - but I don't have openssl so I can't test if
Mixmin
actually does insert the negative timezone "-0000" date header.

But, in summary, my "guess" is that Pan sends no date information
whatsoever, so it's the server that decides what to put there.

Is there any way to prove me right or wrong?

On 2016-07-03 23:58, Mike Yetto wrote:
So it is writ, so mote it be....
Henry Jones :


When you don't supply a Date: header the server will supply one.
I think this has been explained a few times in this thread.

When the server supplies the header in UTC it will obey the rules
regarding '+' or '-' as they apply to the server supplying the
header, not the newsreader that isn't supplying the header.

Those rules have been discussed in this thread as well.

Also the server may check the Date header and modify it if it doesn't
match a set of rules. Like adding that + or - sign.


What hasn't been spelled out in a simple way is that the server
builds the Date: header using those rules based on its own clock
and time zone settings, not on the one not supplied by the news
reader.

Could it be that Pan doesn't supply the Date: header at all? I
use slrn with leafnode2 as the local news server and that header
seems to be coming from leafnode2.

The client has to add a Date header line. If it is missing, leafnode
(which acts as a server) adds a correct one.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

On Sun, 03 Jul 2016 19:36:55 -0400, FromTheRafters wrote:

In the versions of Pan that I have used, you could suppress the Date
header and the server would put its own there. I never considered it a
privacy issue to do it either way.

I looked to answer the OP's question (he/she seems to have gotten scared
when someone geolocated him/her).

I don't see anything inside of Pan that says *anything* about the date.

In fact, I "think" that Pan actually sends zero date information.

I don't know that for a fact, but it jives with what I've seen:

1. Pan to aioe ends up with the default aioe header of "+0000 (UTC)"
2. Pan to netfront has the (default?) header of "+0000 (UTC)"
3. Pan to mixmin has the (default?) header of "-0000 (UTC)"
4. Telnet to aioe sans Date header has the default header of "+0000 (UTC)"

So, my "hypothesis" is that Pan doesn't send *any* date header!
And, I can't find any way to change that operation.

Maybe someone on the Gmane mailing list for Pan can ask the developers?

On Sun, 03 Jul 2016 21:11:18 -0400, FromTheRafters wrote:

It has to do with threading. It's just a list or chain of Message-IDs of
posts going back to the OP. I suppose you can use the Message-ID for
that too.

I also thought the "References" line was the Message ID of the post I was
replying to (which you're saying can go back a few levels).

But *every* time I tried cutting and pasting the message id of the post I
was replying to, I encountered a syntax error.

What I did was:

telnet nntp.aioe.org 119
help
group news.software.readers
next
body
head
(and from the header, I'd copy the message ID)
post
... I'd put all the headers ...
References: i'd-put-the-copied-message-id

But it would *fail* every time.
So, it's not as simple as it sounds to construct a References line from
scratch.

On 2016-07-04 03:13, Henry Jones wrote:

But, in summary, my "guess" is that Pan sends no date information
whatsoever, so it's the server that decides what to put there.

Could be... That way it is assured to be correct. Maybe Pan was designed
when personal computers were not assured of having a correct time source.

Is there any way to prove me right or wrong?

Yes, sniff the connection with Wireshark/Ethereal or equivalent.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

On 2016-07-04 03:17, Henry Jones wrote:
On Sun, 03 Jul 2016 19:36:55 -0400, FromTheRafters wrote:

In the versions of Pan that I have used, you could suppress the Date
header and the server would put its own there. I never considered it a
privacy issue to do it either way.

I looked to answer the OP's question (he/she seems to have gotten scared
when someone geolocated him/her).

Oops. That was me. But it was a fact he had to learn.
But maybe he is simply sleeping :-)

After all, he appears to post with a real mail address.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

On 2016-07-04, Henry Jones wrote:
On Sun, 03 Jul 2016 19:36:55 -0400, FromTheRafters wrote:

In the versions of Pan that I have used, you could suppress the Date
header and the server would put its own there. I never considered it a
privacy issue to do it either way.

I looked to answer the OP's question (he/she seems to have gotten scared
when someone geolocated him/her).

Yes, They claimed that they were worried because the date format might
tell someone that they were using Pan (as a matter of privacy) and
stopped posting when it was pointed out that his reader, his IP his ISP
his new posting site, were all in his headers.

I don't see anything inside of Pan that says *anything* about the date.

In fact, I "think" that Pan actually sends zero date information.

I don't know that for a fact, but it jives with what I've seen:

1. Pan to aioe ends up with the default aioe header of "+0000 (UTC)"
2. Pan to netfront has the (default?) header of "+0000 (UTC)"
3. Pan to mixmin has the (default?) header of "-0000 (UTC)"
4. Telnet to aioe sans Date header has the default header of "+0000 (UTC)"

So, my "hypothesis" is that Pan doesn't send *any* date header!
And, I can't find any way to change that operation.

One could probably do a tcpdump and see exactly what is sent by pan to
the nntp server.

On Mon, 04 Jul 2016 03:10:44 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:

Some servers refuse to accept a post if the date is too old.

Heh heh ... and the aioe server wouldn't accept a date in the future
either!

I was impressed at how well aioe checked header syntax.

It makes sense since it has to handle all sorts of news clients, even
telnet.

On Mon, 04 Jul 2016 03:15:58 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:

Also the server may check the Date header and modify it if it doesn't
match a set of rules. Like adding that + or - sign.

When I telneted into aioe, the newssserver added the date and the +0000
and the comment (UTC) when I didn't add any date line.

But when I added a date line, as long as the date line was at a reasonable
time and of valid syntax (the server did a *lot* of checking!), it took,
verbatim, whatever I gave it.

The client has to add a Date header line. If it is missing, leafnode
(which acts as a server) adds a correct one.

I'm "guessing" that Pan doesn't add any Date line.
I may be wrong. In fact, everyone has said otherwise.

But that's my guess based only on trying to make the evidence fit.

On 2016-07-04 04:14, Henry Jones wrote:
On Mon, 04 Jul 2016 03:15:58 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:

Also the server may check the Date header and modify it if it doesn't
match a set of rules. Like adding that + or - sign.

When I telneted into aioe, the newssserver added the date and the +0000
and the comment (UTC) when I didn't add any date line.

But when I added a date line, as long as the date line was at a reasonable
time and of valid syntax (the server did a *lot* of checking!), it took,
verbatim, whatever I gave it.

Yes...

The client has to add a Date header line. If it is missing, leafnode
(which acts as a server) adds a correct one.

I'm "guessing" that Pan doesn't add any Date line.
I may be wrong. In fact, everyone has said otherwise.

But that's my guess based only on trying to make the evidence fit.

I think it makes sense, yes.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

After serious thinking Henry Jones wrote :
On Sun, 03 Jul 2016 19:36:55 -0400, FromTheRafters wrote:

In the versions of Pan that I have used, you could suppress the Date
header and the server would put its own there. I never considered it a
privacy issue to do it either way.

I looked to answer the OP's question (he/she seems to have gotten scared
when someone geolocated him/her).

I don't see anything inside of Pan that says *anything* about the date.

In fact, I "think" that Pan actually sends zero date information.

I don't know that for a fact, but it jives with what I've seen:

1. Pan to aioe ends up with the default aioe header of "+0000 (UTC)"
2. Pan to netfront has the (default?) header of "+0000 (UTC)"
3. Pan to mixmin has the (default?) header of "-0000 (UTC)"
4. Telnet to aioe sans Date header has the default header of "+0000 (UTC)"

So, my "hypothesis" is that Pan doesn't send *any* date header!
And, I can't find any way to change that operation.

Maybe someone on the Gmane mailing list for Pan can ask the developers?

It could be that I'm confusing Pan with Sylpheed. I can't be sure since
I have misremembered things before.

Henry Jones formulated on Sunday :
On Sun, 03 Jul 2016 22:35:33 +0000, Whiskers wrote:

Certainly if the user doesn't supply a Date header the server will, just
as happens with the Message-ID header. If the server doesn't think the
user-supplied Date header is 'correct' then it should either reject the
post or insert a separate header of its own, 'NNTP-Posting-Date'. Some
servers always insert that header.

Just by way of noting my experience, the aioe server did a *lot* of syntax
and logic checking. Whenever I telneted in a date the newsserver didn't
like, it gave a very clear error message (e.g., time off too much, or
invalid syntax).

I resorted to cutting and pasting, which, as you can imagine, is
absolutely painful in the Windows DOS command line.

When I had a dial-up internet connection, I used to post via a local
caching proxy news-server (Hamster or Leafnode), dialing up to log in to
the news-server at regular intervals or when I'd got a batch of posts to
send. That could result in my posts appearing with a wide range of Date
headers (several hours sometimes) but with NNTP-Posting-Date headers all
at the same time or within a minute or so. Keen eyed geeky readers
sometimes commented on this. I believe my local proxy server (running
on my own computer) was inserting the Date headers when I wrote the
articles; the NNTP-Posting-Date was being supplied by the upstream
server I was posting to.

In summary, the aioe server did what I would have expected it to do (at
least in hindsight).

1) If I omitted the date header, "something" put a date header in of the
format "+0000 (UTC)".

2) If I added a valid date header, aioe faithfully reproduced whatever I
typed, whether I used a plus or minus and whatever comment I added
thereafter, or whether I omitted the TZ offset and comment.

I will repeat I only know my results - and I don't know how this stuff
works, but my *guess* goes *against* what everyone has said, so far.

It's my *guess* that Pan inserts nothing for the date.

That would at least explain why Mixmin has a different resulting header
than netfront and aioe - but I don't have openssl so I can't test if
Mixmin
actually does insert the negative timezone "-0000" date header.

But, in summary, my "guess" is that Pan sends no date information
whatsoever, so it's the server that decides what to put there.

Is there any way to prove me right or wrong?

I found a list of bug fixes and this was in the

"Pan was posting an invalid Date: header in timezones that were
minutes, instead of hours, offset from UTC (such as +0930 instead of
+0900 or +1000). Thanks to Gaelyne Gasson for reporting this bug."

Maybe the bug is causing the server to reject the user defined field.

I still think there is a setting in there somewhere, but documentation
is hard to find for Pan.

On 2016-07-04, Carlos E. R. wrote:
On 2016-07-04 03:13, Henry Jones wrote:

But, in summary, my "guess" is that Pan sends no date information
whatsoever, so it's the server that decides what to put there.

Could be... That way it is assured to be correct. Maybe Pan was designed
when personal computers were not assured of having a correct time source.

The first release of Pan was in 1999. The last version to inherit code
from that was 0.14.0.96 dated 15/8/2003. At that point a complete
re-write from scratch was begun, the latest incarnation of which is
version 0.140 dated 24/3/2016. Note that the re-write version numbers
are of the form 0.xxx whereas the original strain had version numbers of
the form 0.xx[[.x[x][.xx]]]

Is there any way to prove me right or wrong?

Yes, sniff the connection with Wireshark/Ethereal or equivalent.



--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

On 2016-07-04, FromTheRafters wrote:
Henry Jones formulated on Sunday :
On Sun, 03 Jul 2016 22:35:33 +0000, Whiskers wrote:

[...]

But, in summary, my "guess" is that Pan sends no date information
whatsoever, so it's the server that decides what to put there.

Is there any way to prove me right or wrong?

I found a list of bug fixes and this was in the

"Pan was posting an invalid Date: header in timezones that were
minutes, instead of hours, offset from UTC (such as +0930 instead of
+0900 or +1000). Thanks to Gaelyne Gasson for reporting this bug."

Maybe the bug is causing the server to reject the user defined field.

Well spotted.

I still think there is a setting in there somewhere, but documentation
is hard to find for Pan.

Heh ) One of Pan's notable traditional features is an absence of
documentation.

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

So it is writ, so mote it be....
Carlos E. R. :
On 2016-07-03 23:58, Mike Yetto wrote:
So it is writ, so mote it be....
Henry Jones :


When you don't supply a Date: header the server will supply one.
I think this has been explained a few times in this thread.

When the server supplies the header in UTC it will obey the rules
regarding '+' or '-' as they apply to the server supplying the
header, not the newsreader that isn't supplying the header.

Those rules have been discussed in this thread as well.

Also the server may check the Date header and modify it if it doesn't
match a set of rules. Like adding that + or - sign.

That "+" or "-" sign is based on the timezone set in the system
that creates the header. For a server to change only that one
character would be the wrong thing to do as it is blending data
from two different systems without even specifying if that was
done.

What hasn't been spelled out in a simple way is that the server
builds the Date: header using those rules based on its own clock
and time zone settings, not on the one not supplied by the news
reader.

Could it be that Pan doesn't supply the Date: header at all? I
use slrn with leafnode2 as the local news server and that header
seems to be coming from leafnode2.

The client has to add a Date header line. If it is missing, leafnode
(which acts as a server) adds a correct one.

I checked the actions of Leafnode2 and found that it will create
a Date: header with -0000 when the time zone is set to my local
time, When I set my time zone to UTC it will create the header
with +0000. This is consistent with information in this thread.

The above was done with slrn not sending a Date: header. I have
since set slrn to include the header.

Mike "placed to 1/24th of the Earth by my timezone" Yetto
--
"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable."
- Albert Camus