nnfolder has me baffled

nnfolder has me baffled

[Randal L. Schwartz]

OK... I have nearly all the default settings, and decided to start
using nnfolder:'s to hold some of my older mail (fewer inodes).  I've
never used that nnfolder:archive thing, but it's still hanging around.

As far as I can see, there's a nnfolder-directory set to ~/Mail (the
default), except sometimes it gets set to ~/Mail/archive.  When I look
at the nnfolder:archive server, I see this:

(nnfolder "archive"
	  (nnfolder-directory "~/Mail/archive")
	  (nnfolder-active-file "~/Mail/archive/active")
	  (nnfolder-get-new-mail nil)
	  (nnfolder-inhibit-expiry t))

But before I've examined that, nnfolder-directory is ~/Mail.

So, I tried G-M'ing a group with "arch.todo" "nnfolder".  It created a
directory ~/Mail/arch/todo (note, NOT under ~/Mail/archive), which
nnml on next invocation decided was an nnml group.  It also took about
three or four tries to get everyone to agree that the folder wasn't
there again.

Help!  What am I doing wrong?  I'm missing something very simple, I'm
sure.  But it doesn't look like it works "out of the box".

-- 
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<merlyn@stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
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Re: nnfolder has me baffled

[Shenghuo ZHU]

>>>>> "Randal" == Randal L Schwartz <merlyn@stonehenge.com> writes:

Randal> OK... I have nearly all the default settings, and decided to start
Randal> using nnfolder:'s to hold some of my older mail (fewer inodes).  I've
Randal> never used that nnfolder:archive thing, but it's still hanging around.

Randal> As far as I can see, there's a nnfolder-directory set to ~/Mail (the
Randal> default), except sometimes it gets set to ~/Mail/archive.  When I look
Randal> at the nnfolder:archive server, I see this:

Randal> (nnfolder "archive"
Randal> 	  (nnfolder-directory "~/Mail/archive")
Randal> 	  (nnfolder-active-file "~/Mail/archive/active")
Randal> 	  (nnfolder-get-new-mail nil)
Randal> 	  (nnfolder-inhibit-expiry t))

Randal> But before I've examined that, nnfolder-directory is ~/Mail.

Randal> So, I tried G-M'ing a group with "arch.todo" "nnfolder".  It

You should use "nnfolder:archive" instead of "nnfolder".


[...]

-- 
Shenghuo

Re: nnfolder has me baffled

[Randal L. Schwartz]

>>>>> "ZSH" == Shenghuo ZHU <zsh@cs.rochester.edu> writes:

ZSH> You should use "nnfolder:archive" instead of "nnfolder".

And what piece of documentation would tell me that, and why doesn't
the other work?  If it's as broken as my short experiment showed, it
should be red-flagged in the docs.  Or just fixed.

-- 
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<merlyn@stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training!

Re: nnfolder has me baffled

[Shenghuo ZHU]

>>>>> "Randal" == Randal L Schwartz <merlyn@stonehenge.com> writes:

>>>>> "ZSH" == Shenghuo ZHU <zsh@cs.rochester.edu> writes:
ZSH> You should use "nnfolder:archive" instead of "nnfolder".

Randal> And what piece of documentation would tell me that, and why
Randal> doesn't the other work?  If it's as broken as my short
Randal> experiment showed, it should be red-flagged in the docs.  Or
Randal> just fixed.

"nnfolder" means the method of (nnfolder ""), while "nnfolder:archive"
is used for (nnfolder "archive").

-- 
Shenghuo

Re: nnfolder has me baffled

[Kai Großjohann]

merlyn@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) writes:

> So, I tried G-M'ing a group with "arch.todo" "nnfolder".  It created a
> directory ~/Mail/arch/todo (note, NOT under ~/Mail/archive),

This is the right thing for Gnus to do, since it has two servers,
`nnfolder+archive' and `nnfolder', and you chose the second one.

> which nnml on next invocation decided was an nnml group.  It also
> took about three or four tries to get everyone to agree that the
> folder wasn't there again.

This is because two of your backends (nnml and nnfolder) share the
same active file, and each gets confused by the other's groups.

You may wish to frob your nnfolder server to have a different active
file.  It might be best to locate your nnfolder server in a different
directory altogether, though I'm not sure if this is necessary.  (I
avoid multiple servers using the same directory :-)

kai
-- 
Beware of flying birch trees.

Re: nnfolder has me baffled

[Kai Großjohann]

merlyn@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) writes:

> >>>>> "ZSH" == Shenghuo ZHU <zsh@cs.rochester.edu> writes:
> 
> ZSH> You should use "nnfolder:archive" instead of "nnfolder".
> 
> And what piece of documentation would tell me that, and why doesn't
> the other work?  If it's as broken as my short experiment showed, it
> should be red-flagged in the docs.  Or just fixed.

Hm?  If you type `rm foo', do you expect the system to delete the file
`foo.c' instead?

When Gnus asks you for a server, and you enter the server name, why
should it choose a different server than the one you entered?

kai
-- 
Beware of flying birch trees.

Re: nnfolder has me baffled

[Randal L. Schwartz]

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>>>>> "Kai" == Kai Großjohann <Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE> writes:

Kai> Hm?  If you type `rm foo', do you expect the system to delete the file
Kai> `foo.c' instead?

No, I expect it to delete "foo".

Kai> When Gnus asks you for a server, and you enter the server name, why
Kai> should it choose a different server than the one you entered?

I did a G M of "arch.todo" and "nnfolder".  I expected this to create
an nnfolder thing "somewhere".  As it turns out, it creates it in the
same directory as my "nnml" did, and they can't tell from each other
who owns the directory.

Apparently the value for nnfolder-directory "out of the box" is the
same as the value for nnml-directory "out of the box", so the two
servers fight over the same named files and directories.  If it breaks
things, then it should either be disabled, or red-flagged.  I'm no
dummy, and I ended up creating some nasty overlaps.  How in the world
do you expect a *beginner* to get this?

How would it have occured to me to use "arch.todo" and "archive"
instead of "nnfolder", when I see "nnfolder" in the list of backends
for mail in the manual, and not "archive"?

-- 
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<merlyn@stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training!

Re: nnfolder has me baffled

[Randal L. Schwartz]

>>>>> "ZSH" == Shenghuo ZHU <zsh@cs.rochester.edu> writes:

Randal> And what piece of documentation would tell me that, and why
Randal> doesn't the other work?  If it's as broken as my short
Randal> experiment showed, it should be red-flagged in the docs.  Or
Randal> just fixed.

ZSH> "nnfolder" means the method of (nnfolder ""), while "nnfolder:archive"
ZSH> is used for (nnfolder "archive").

That misses the issue again.

When I create a new NNML group, I type:

        G M
        random.group <RET>
        nnml <RET>

When I created this NNFOLDER group, I typed:

        G M
        random.group <RET>
        nnfolder <RET>

And nnfolder put it in the same directory space as the nnml groups,
and they both started duking it out.

It *doesn't* work out of the box.  Or if that's not the way I should
have used it, it *wasn't* red flagged as "you can't use THIS until
you set THAT and THAT OTHER THING".

I'm not an idiot.  But I broke things by trying to follow directions.
If you say the directions are in there, please point to them.

-- 
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<merlyn@stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training!

Re: nnfolder has me baffled

[Kai Großjohann]

merlyn@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) writes:

> Apparently the value for nnfolder-directory "out of the box" is the
> same as the value for nnml-directory "out of the box", so the two
> servers fight over the same named files and directories.  If it breaks
> things, then it should either be disabled, or red-flagged.  I'm no
> dummy, and I ended up creating some nasty overlaps.  How in the world
> do you expect a *beginner* to get this?

Ah.  Right.  This is a problem.  I have tried to get the Powers That
Be to change the directories, but they raise the (valid) point that
this would stop existing Gnus installations from running.  Which is
bad.

Lars' suggestion was to have `server creation' wizards which
automatically offer different directories (or active files, at least)
as a default.

kai

PS: Since `Lars' is pronounced like `lush' (I gather), does that mean
    I should have written "Lars's"?
-- 
Beware of flying birch trees.

Re: nnfolder has me baffled

[David S. Goldberg]

There was a thread about using multiple mail backends and multiple
servers of the same type within the last couple of months.  I thought
the general consensus was that having the default values of
nn*-directory etc was a bad thing precisely because of this problem.
I'm not sure there was consensus on what to do about it.
-- 
Dave Goldberg
Post: The Mitre Corporation\MS K207\202 Burlington Rd.\Bedford, MA 01730
Phone: 781-271-3887
Email: dsg@mitre.org

Re: nnfolder has me baffled

[Jaap-Henk Hoepman]

On 12 May 2000 11:49:22 -0700 merlyn@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) writes:
> That misses the issue again.
> 
> When I create a new NNML group, I type:
> 
>         G M
>         random.group <RET>
>         nnml <RET>
> 
> When I created this NNFOLDER group, I typed:
> 
>         G M
>         random.group <RET>
>         nnfolder <RET>
> 
> And nnfolder put it in the same directory space as the nnml groups,
> and they both started duking it out.

You should use seperate directories for the different backends. I've found out
the hard way too, a year back, and I don't think the docs tell you this. So,
you'll have to set

(setq nnfolder-directory "/home/name/Mail/nnfolder")
(setq nnml-directory "/home/name/Mail/nnml")

Jaap-Henk

-- 
Jaap-Henk Hoepman             | Come sail your ships around me
Dept. of Computer Science     | And burn these bridges down
University of Twente          |       Nick Cave - "Ship Song"
Email: hoepman@cs.utwente.nl === WWW: www.cs.utwente.nl/~hoepman
Phone: +31 53 4893795 === Secr: +31 53 4893770 === Fax: +31 53 4894590
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mail backend directories (was: nnfolder has me baffled)

[Toby Speight]

JH> Jaap-Henk Hoepman <URL:mailto:hoepman@cs.utwente.nl>

0> In article <kp66sjzfgq.fsf@utip202.cs.utwente.nl>, JH wrote:

JH> You should use seperate directories for the different backends. I've
JH> found out the hard way too, a year back, and I don't think the docs
JH> tell you this.

Is this a bug-report/feature-request on the manual?  If not, then can
it please be one?

I think the sections that show how to add a new mail backend should
"strongly recommend" specifying a directory (that's different from any
other directory).

How hard would it be to write code that checked for different backends
using the same directory, and throw an error if that happens?  (What I
mean is, somebody with more time than me please do it!)