No Gnus v0.4 from CVS: very slow: nnimap: Updating info for <group>

[Chris Shenton <chris@shenton.org>]

I've installed gnus from CVS, it says "No Gnus v.04".  Emacs is 21.3.1
on FreeBSD-4.11-STABLE).

Gnus gets mail from a courier IMAP server.  It's now become so slow
getting mail that it's unusable. (Reading the same server with Mozilla
Mail or OSX Mail is fast so I don't believe the problem's with the
server).

When I first start it up, it says something about checking news and
getting a list of mailboxes from the server.  Then for what appears to
be every one of the mailboxes (IMAP folders) on the server, it says
something like:

  nnimap: Updating info for nnimap+NewHrose:INBOX:list.courier-users...done

It seems to take about 5 seconds for each of these, and I have over a
hundred IMAP folders.  So it takes an unacceptable time to get to read
my mail -- like 15 minutes just to get to the *Group* buffer.

In the past, I've seen this happen when I used "g" in the *Group*
buffer to get mail, but not all the time.  Doing a "R" to restart Gnus
has seemed to help.  Now it appears to be happening both at startup
and when I do a "g" or "R".

I also just noticed a second, and a third message about that same
"list.courier-users" folder. I see it happening with other folders
too. That seems very suspicious.

Below are what I hope to be the relevant bits of my .gnus.el file.
Any clues as to what's going on and how I can fix it? Google shows me
some discussion on this between Tibor Simko, Kai Grossjohann, and
Simon Josefsson but that's from vintage 1999.

Thanks for your help.


(setq gnus-select-method '(nnnil))	;HQ has no news server
(setq
 gnus-secondary-select-methods
 '(
   (nnml "")				;pop, files
   (nnimap "NewHorse"
	   (nnimap-address "newhorse.hq.nasa.gov")
	   (nnimap-stream network)	; cleartext: debug disconnects
	   );nnimap
   )
 )

(setq
 mail-sources
 '(
   (maildir	:plugged	t) ; qmail ~/Maildir/ default
   (file	:path		"/home/cshenton/Mailbox"
		:plugged	t ; qmail mbox (NOT maildir)
		);file
   )
 )

(setq					; Splitting
 nnimap-split-crosspost	nil		; unduped freebsd articles? first match
 nnimap-split-inbox	'("INBOX")
 nnimap-split-predicate "UNDELETED"	; default = UNSEEN UNDELETED
 nnimap-split-fancy	nil
 nnimap-split-download-body nil		; default = 'default = nil for now
 nnimap-split-rule
 '(		;unmatched msgs stay in INBOX
  ;; [split rules elided]...
 );;setq

(setq
 gnus-subscribe-newsgroup-method 'gnus-subscribe-randomly ; top insert
 gnus-read-active-file 'some		;some: only read relevant ACTIVE
 gnus-check-new-newsgroups 'ask-server	;OK: nntp "NEWSGROUPS Date Time"
 gnus-options-not-subscribe "^alt\\.\\|\\.sports\\.\\|^soc\\."
 gnus-auto-select-first nil             ; don't show first message until I say
 gnus-group-use-permanent-levels t      ; reuse level prefix on g, l
 gnus-keep-same-level t                 ; don't automove to lower-level group
 gnus-save-duplicate-list t             ; Save between sessions
 gnus-suppress-duplicates t             ;based on Message-ID
 gnus-show-mime t                       ; all the time / manually request
 gnus-strict-mime t                     ; only with Mime-Version?
 gnus-view-pseudo-asynchronously t      ; don't make Gnus wait
 gnus-vew-pseudos 'not-confirm		; no summary buffer insert; 'automatic
 gnus-view-pseudos-separately t         ; create pseudo articles for viewing
 bbdb/gnus-summary-mark-known-posters t ;can't make work??
 gnus-score-find-score-files-function '(gnus-score-find-bnews bbdb/gnus-score)
 nnmail-use-long-file-names nil	;hierarchies
 nnmail-expiry-wait 7		;days; see group param total-expire
)