OT (Kindof) - News Server asking for Username and Password

[xphilsc]

Hi all

Since the move from Outlook Express to Thunderbird, the latter has proved a fairly reliable means of accessing this and other similar groups. After posting about barometer repairs successfully last week, Thunderbird has stopped displaying message content in the reading pane (just the headers) and is requesting username and password details instead.

Looking at the setup of the news account there are no fields relating to password and no username as such (only the name displayed when posting messages).

Anyone know what's going on here? The ISP is Karoo in Hull - server is news.karoo.co.uk.

Posted via the dreaded Google groups.

Thanks

Phil

[Brian Gaff]

well there has to be some password surely? Tis eternal september account has to be logged into. Brian

[John Rumm]

Not usually if the news server is "bundled" with your ISP service, they normally authenticate based on the IP address you are using belonging to their IP address block.

Yup, external accounts will need authentication.

[John Rumm]

Normally if it detects that it needs authentication it will prompt for credentials when it tries to access the server. Sometimes it might do that in error if the news server does not respond for other reasons. If it gives the option to "reenter password" then it might be worth trying that and entering a blank password.

Are you sure you are accessing the system via Karoo? For example attempting to connect via a 3G mobile connection or via a load balancing router with several ISP connections can cause problems since the route in will not be the expected one/

According to

they subcontract to giganews (as do many ISPs these days).

I notice that if they are going slow and I hit N a few times in succession to skip to the next post, I can in effect end up stacking several NNTP requests in parallel. This does cause the authentication box to pop up, since giganews seem to use it as a way of rejecting too many parallel connections from the same host.

[Phil Heads]

Thanks to all respondents.

KC have stopped their news service as of yesterday. Please see follow up post on News Server Recommendations.

Phil

[Vir Campestris]

That's interesting - my home account is Eclipse, which is also part of the KCOM group. I had news last weekend, I'll have to check next time I'm at home.

Andy