NNTP Bridge Not Working 6/28/2012 update

Question

Today we updated the forums with some minor fixes. We notice that there are currently issues when posting from the NNTP Bridge. Reads seam to be ok, but posting gives a client error.

So any of you NNTP bridge users out there, we are aware of this and we are investigating. Please check back for further updates. 

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Community Forums Program Manager

Answer 1

I've not noticed any  problems yet, Brent (but I've not posted much tonight)

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Noel Paton | Nil Carborundum Illegitemi | CrashFixPC | The Three-toed Sloth

Answer 2

I knew it was too good to last -

I'm getting 'TCP/IP connection unexpectedly terminated' 800ccc0f errors on accessing the groups, now, although syncing still seems to work OK.

I'm getting 441 errors on responses :(

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Noel Paton | Nil Carborundum Illegitemi | CrashFixPC | The Three-toed Sloth

Answer 3

I'm now not syncing, either. :(

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Noel Paton | Nil Carborundum Illegitemi | CrashFixPC | The Three-toed Sloth

Answer 4

FYI: I got several reports here:

http://communitybridge.codeplex.com/discussions/361366

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Jochen Kalmbach (MVP VC++)

Answer 5

I'm not getting anything with Outlook Express.  I get the following:

"Your 'Microsoft.en-US.whs2011' folder was not polled for its unread count.  Account: 'Bridge 1', Server: '127.0.0.1', Protocol: NNTP, Server Response: '503 program fault - command not performed System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[[System.ServiceModel.ExceptionDetail, System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089]]: Could not load file or assembly 'ServiceStack.Text, Version=3.4.6.3017, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.', Port: 119, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 503, Error Number: 0x800CCCA4"

I even installed the Bridge on a test box computer and get the same error.  Please advise.

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BullDawg

Answer 6

Today we updated the forums with some minor fixes. We notice that there are currently issues when posting from the NNTP Bridge. Reads seam to be ok, but posting gives a client error.

So any of you NNTP bridge users out there, we are aware of this and we are investigating. Please check back for further updates. 

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Community Forums Program Manager

I found the fix in two easy steps.

1.  Flip the switch to turn the web interface off.

2.  Flip the switch to turn the MS NNTP server back on.

That should solve the problem! 

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BullDawg

Answer 7

That only works for syncing - not for posting :(

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Noel Paton | Nil Carborundum Illegitemi | CrashFixPC | The Three-toed Sloth

Answer 8

There is no switch to "turn the web interface off".

You mean:

1. disable "use NNTP bridge"

2. reenable "use NNTP bridge"

I can confirm that this works for reading. Thanks for letting us know!

I can also confirm that it doesn't work for posting :-) The error is

[Client: 17] Response: 441 posting failed System.ServiceModel.FaultException: The creator of this fault did not specify a Reason.

 Apparently, they already know about this, so let's just wait and see. There is nothing else we can do.

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IEFAQ: http://iefaq.info

Answer 9

Actually, I was being sarcastic.  I really meant  "do away with the Forums and go back to the NNTP servers as they were a couple of years ago."

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BullDawg

Answer 10

Nope reading of posts are not OK as of 12:28 hrs on 06/29/2012.

Answer 11

perhaps you could roll these minor fixes back while you investigate and retest on internal servers? wouldn't that make more sense than leaving the bridge broken?

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Barb Bowman

http://www.digitalmediaphile.com

Answer 12

I understand there is a hotfix to address the problems with the bridge service, that will be pushed live this afternoon.

HTH,

Emily

Answer 13

I was not able to read earlier today, but I am now. (With flipping any switch.) If this post makes it, it means that I am able to post.

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Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, [e-mail]

Answer 14

Success for me reading and posting today. I did nothing special. I did, however, skip a
few days and thus miss all the problems:-)

On Fri, 29 Jun 2012 00:02:12 +0000, Brent Serbus [ADMIN_MSFT] wrote:

Today we updated the forums with some minor fixes. We notice that there are currently issues when posting from the NNTP Bridge. Reads seam to be ok, but posting gives a client error.

So any of you NNTP bridge users out there, we are aware of this and we are investigating. Please check back for further updates. 

-----------------------------------------
To reply to me, remove the underscores (_) from my email address (and please indicate which newsgroup and message).

Robert E. Zaret
PenFact, Inc.
20 Park Plaza, Suite 400
Boston, MA 02116
www.penfact.com
r_z_aret@pen_fact.com
Useful reading (be sure to read its disclaimer first):
   http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Answer 15

We've restored the bridge to working status. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

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Life is one big road with a lot of signs.

Answer 16

We've restored the bridge to working status. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

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Life is one big road with a lot of signs.

Hooray!

Answer 17

I can confirm that everything appears to be working again (except for my 3G connection :-( )

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Noel Paton | Nil Carborundum Illegitemi | CrashFixPC | The Three-toed Sloth

Answer 18

I can't believe I'm the only one that got that :-)

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SC Tom

Answer 19

I choose to blame caffeine withdrawal :)

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Noel Paton | Nil Carborundum Illegitemi | CrashFixPC | The Three-toed Sloth

Answer 20

Actually, I was being sarcastic.  I really meant  "do away with the Forums and go back to the NNTP servers as they were a couple of years ago."

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BullDawg

Not going to happen. NNTP is not a supported MS technology, so this is NOT an option. What 'should' happen... build an open api so people can build bridges that are owned and updated by the community (as good as the community wants them to be). This would also enable non bridge scenarios/offline clients... it would be really cool!

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Community Forums Program Manager

Answer 21

Hmmm - what you just described IS NNTP :)

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Noel Paton | Nil Carborundum Illegitemi | CrashFixPC | The Three-toed Sloth

Answer 22

I guess if 'what you described as NNTP' means loose authentication, antiquated technology and no api, yes. But that isn't the way I see it. An api that let's people build a better bridge, if that's what the community wants, or whatever else they want, I think this would be a good thing to do. Enabling this while preserving and improving the web experience is what I'd like to see happen.

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Community Forums Program Manager

Answer 23

I lost everything in my antiquated, old technology, Outlook Express (sarcasm again, but mostly true!).  Had to resubscribe, download all headers, etc.  Actually, it was something I had been meaning to do for a long time because there were many posts I had accidentally deleted instead of marking as read.  So, not really a bad thing, just something I hadn't planned on doing this weekend.

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BullDawg

Answer 24

:) - at least NNTP gets the threading right :)

The patches seem to have worked, but everything I've posted this morning appears to be threaded directly below the OP rather than as a reply to whatever post I'm responding to.

Is this 'by design' or will it be fixed?

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Noel Paton | Nil Carborundum Illegitemi | CrashFixPC | The Three-toed Sloth

Answer 25

Hi Brent,

it seems that the "hotfix" has a problem with the replies. As Noel states here:
http://social.Msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/reportabug/thread/e169bd6e-19bf-44db-a36d-fb222c14e298#4061d112-23de-4c22-b272-7730ed00f977

The new behavior is now, that a reply to a specific post is always displayed as a reply to the first post.
This is a bad behavior compared with yesterday... will this also be fixed???

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Jochen Kalmbach (MVP VC++)

Answer 26

Am 30.06.2012 11:50, schrieb Noel D Paton:

The patches seem to have worked, but everything I've posted this morning appears to be threaded directly below the OP rather than as a reply to whatever post I'm responding to.

Yes, Noel, this seems to be a new problem... but I also assume that my reply is not threaded correctly...
Hopefully MS will also solve this problem...

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Jochen Kalmbach (MVP VC++)

Answer 27

Enabling this while preserving and improving the web experience is what I'd like to see happen.

But some users still can't sign-in and experience the "web experience".

Peter Thornton

Answer 28

The new behavior is now, that a reply to a specific post is always displayed as a reply to the_first_ post.

Ah, yes that's what I am experiencing today.

Including this post I will have posted two replies in this thread. I can already see my first appears as a reply to the OP, not as intended or posted, and no doubt this post will appear similarly.

Peter Thornton

Answer 29

Let me see where mine goes.

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<Peter Thornton [MVP]> wrote in message news:[e-mail]...

The new behavior is now, that a reply to a specific post is always displayed as a reply to the_first_ post.

Ah, yes that's what I am experiencing today.

Including this post I will have posted two replies in this thread. I can already see my first appears as a reply to the OP, not as intended or posted, and no doubt this post will appear similarly.

Peter Thornton

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BullDawg

Answer 30

Same behavior

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The new behavior is now, that a reply to a specific post is always displayed as a reply to the_first_ post.

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BullDawg

Answer 31

I assume from your previous reply that the reader is threading ok and the site is not. Is that a safe assumption?

We've opened a ticket for this issue and will address it shortly.

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Life is one big road with a lot of signs.

Answer 32

It does seem that way - I've had to swap nntp clients since then so I have still to get used to the new way of working . (WLMail trashed itself for the third time in four months - it's not going to get a chance to do it again! I thought OE had occasional problems, and Windows Mail looked neglected, but WLMail is the inbred child of illegitimate parents)

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Noel Paton | Nil Carborundum Illegitemi | CrashFixPC | The Three-toed Sloth

Answer 33

Threading correctly in Outlook Express also, but not the Web UI.

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BullDawg

Answer 34

Whoops, spoke too soon, the last post did not thread correctly.

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BullDawg
In God We Trust
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<Jah OSullivan [MSFT]> wrote in message news:[e-mail]...

I assume from your previous reply that the reader is threading ok and the site is not. Is that a safe assumption?

We've opened a ticket for this issue and will address it shortly.

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Life is one big road with a lot of signs.

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BullDawg

Answer 35

@Microsoft: Everything you post via the bridge will be placed as a reply to the oroginal poster; even if the reply way done to another reply.

This is a new bug, which was not, before you applied the hotfix...

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Jochen Kalmbach (MVP VC++)

Answer 36

Hi guys,

We've identified the problem and our eta for having it resolved is at 5PM PST.

Again sorry for the inconvenience.

Jahmai

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Life is one big road with a lot of signs.

Answer 37

Thanks, Jahmai.

(posted via the web<g>)

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Noel Paton | Nil Carborundum Illegitemi | CrashFixPC | The Three-toed Sloth

Answer 38

Now it seems to work again correctly... Thanks to MS!

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Jochen Kalmbach (MVP VC++)

Answer 39

Hi Jahmai

Unfortunatly not all the newsgroups appear in the bridge. You seem to have it only partially resolved. I get 1063 newgroups, but none of the ones I use are in there. Here a list of what I'm missing:

• Msdn.de-DE.accessde
• Msdn.en-US.isvvba
• Msdn.de-DE.officede
• Msdn.en-US.accessdev
• Msdn.de-DE.sqlserverde
• Msdn.en-US.officegeneral

Any chance to get this fixed soon?

Thanks
Henry

Answer 40

Hi Henry,

as you should knwon, this is a long existing bug in the web-service. You need to refresh the group list several times in order to get the complete list...

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Jochen Kalmbach (MVP VC++)

Answer 41

Hi Jochen

Not completely. I don't get any of my forums to the newsgroups. It seems only to be partially working correctly.

Groups I'm missing are:

• Msdn.de-DE.accessde
• Msdn.en-US.isvvba
• Msdn.de-DE.officede
• Msdn.en-US.accessdev
• Msdn.de-DE.sqlserverde
• Msdn.en-US.officegeneral

Not sure, maybe it needs some time until the fix works here, too. I live in Thailand. Maybe it needs time to populate the fix to all cached servers.

Thanks for your ongoing work on the bridge. The online forums are still a pain in the a** for NNTP used legacy users.

Henry

Answer 42

Hi Jochen

I was aware of this and you can believe me: I tried serveral times since a few days (>100). I turned Answer Forums off, I turned Social Forums off, re-prefetched the lists and turned it on and reprefetched again and again. I even uninstalled the bridge and reinstalled it, deleting the Community directory, too. I tried on XP and Win7, result is always the same. 1063 newsgroups received and if I want to search without any term it displays 969 / 969 newsgroups.

Clicking the function again doesn't do a lot (or extremely fast). Only difference is it displays somewhat ~950 (number varying) newsgroups as beeing read. I can't see it's actually reading enything from the network. But my groups are still not in.

If I stop the bridge and restart it, same happens again. But I never got more newsgroups and never get mine in there, since somewhere end of june.

And yes, I also tried different Internet providers. Same result.

Henry

Answer 43

Hi Henry, if you are using a "thing" like Windows (Live) Mail you may have to reset those groups. Compare post about OE above.

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IEFAQ: http://iefaq.info

Answer 44

Btw, the update seems to create problems in the web interface, too. I just got an "unerwarteter Fehler" (unexpected error) message with my first try to reply. I had to refresh the thread and try again. I've seen this a few times since the update.

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IEFAQ: http://iefaq.info

Answer 45

I am also seeing this error often, but I think I was seeing this error before the update also and it's hard to measure if it now happens more often or not.

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For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Becker's Law


My blog

Answer 46

Hi Kay

I reset the list of newsgroups in OE (yes, I'm using OE on XP for this). This caused the newsgroups to disappear as these groups aren't listed anymore. So it's not possible to reset these groups anymore. They are gone.

On the other installation (Win7 and Thunderbird) I didn't reset the list of newgroups of the NNTP bridge. There I still geht the posts even the groups aren't contained in the prefetched groups anymore.

The real problem is: I can't get the complete list of newsgroups. As Jochen pointed out this is a long known bug in the Web Service. Re-fetching the groups (must have tried it already >200 times) didn't help. Either no groups came in or not all (only 1063 groups). My groups aren't in there.

So by now I'm stucked with not receiving the newgroups into the Community Bridge and I don't know a workaround how to get the complete list. As long as the groups don't show up I can't subscribe for these groups and won't be able to use NNTP for the forums with OE anymore.

I'ts just a shame MS never fixed this bug. It must be there already since years because I had similar problems, but not so persistent, in the past.

Henry

Answer 47

In some newsreader you can subscribe to groups, even if the group-name is not listed in the list. I think this also should be possible in OE. Just enter the newsgroup name.

But I am not able to test it with OE, because I have no OE ;)

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Jochen Kalmbach (MVP VC++)

Answer 48

Hi Jochen

Thanks for staying tuned!

Unfortunatly OE doesn't allow this. It only allows to enter a search term and then to subscribe to the found/selected newsgroups.

I also tried to "cheat" the bridge by adding the missing newsgroups manually to the XML file with the prefetched newsgroups. Unfortunatly the list of newsgroups is re-queried when I reset the list in OE and the manually entered newsgroups disappear again.

Any chance to convince the bridge to not read the list of newgroups from the webservice but to just use the xml file with the prefetched newsgroups? This would be a solution as then the manually entered groups would appear in OE and I could subscribe to these.

Thanks

Henry

Answer 49

Currently there is no way to add the group to the bridge, if it is not comming from the web-service.

But you should be able to add the group-names to the stored list in OE, or?

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Jochen Kalmbach (MVP VC++)

Answer 50

Didn't find a way yet how to do this.

The store folder contains some dbx files. The central file probably is the Folders.dbx file. Content is very cryptic. This one then referes to the newsgroups dbx files where the postings are stored. All these files are in a binary format (with some text visible).

Also import doesn't help. The IAF fileformat is binary, too. No idea how to edit such a file.

Manually entering through OE is unfortunatly not possible either as I mentioned already.

So I'll give up for now and will use Thunderbird for the bridge. AFAIR it's possible to copy the Thunderbold store and config files to another machine and use the same files there. I'll give it a try later but would really prefer to use OE for the newsgroups.

Henry

Answer 51

Henry, there is a file UICache.xml, which seems to hold the newsgroups known to the bridge. You could either edit it accordingly or get one from one of us. Jochen, please confirm this is going to work ;-) I don't know if it also holds meta data (like current NNTP number etc.).

Mine here is 401 KB size and wasn't changed since Oct. 2010. It's in C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\Community\CommunityForumsNNTPServer\ on an XP system.

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IEFAQ: http://iefaq.info

Answer 52

Editing the UICache.xml does not work. Sorry.

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Jochen Kalmbach (MVP VC++)

Answer 53

just for your records:

I switched my forum hotmail account to Outlook.com and since then the newgroup list seems to be fully retrieved again.

Henry