Re: Can't select group on groups with unread messages

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> writes:

> Eric,
>
> have you tried going to server mode (^ from Group buffer) and then
> selecting the appropriate server to see what groups are available from
> that server?
>
> The other thing to do is "G c" from the group buffer on that group and
> see what "active" list is (at the end of the buffer you get).  Maybe
> delete that entry and see what happens?

Brilliant, that did it! I was getting the same result in the server
buffer as I was in the groups buffer: broken groups (there turned out to
be a few) couldn't be entered.

But deleting the active parameter did the trick. (I'd also never tried
"G c" before, that was fairly impressive. I'm not really comfortable
with customize, and will probably stick to "G p", but still,
impressive.) I deleted the active list for the broken groups, restarted
Gnus, and all was well.

I'm trying to learn more of the Gnus internals, and feel like I've made
some progress, but I have to say the "active list" stuff still feels
like voodoo to me. There's no way in hell I would have touched those
entries without your prompting (and a fairly unimportant broken group to
test on). There's a fragility to the whole thing that makes me light
incense before I look at gnus-active-hashtb, or ~/.newsrc.eld. And if
Gnus knows enough to tell me it "Can't open group", doesn't it know
enough to try recreating the numbers itself?

Okay, mini-rant over, sorry. I really appreciate the help.

> The latter is most likely to help at all as the problem is likely that
> you have confused gnus by switching servers and the IDs of the messages
> have changed.
>
> I assume you are not using the gnus agent.

I'm not entirely sure, to be honest! I have configured nothing to do
with the agent, but I do use Gnus in unplugged state quite regularly. I
guess that counts...