.newsrc.eld is a black hole for old groups

.newsrc.eld is a black hole for old groups

[jidanni]

Gentlemen, check your .newsrc.eld files.
You will find tons of crap groups you thought you had totally deleted
long ago.
The funny thing is there is no
(info "(gnus) Listing Groups")
key that will list them, C-u argument or not.
You might think C-u A k might show them, but it shows a lot more too,
and whatever you do will not get them out of your .newsrc.eld file.

This I can see in *Group*
  ("nnrss:DebCentral" 6 (1)
   ((seen (1 . 19)))
   (nnrss "")
   ((timestamp 17376 17743)))

But this is in no way accessible there:
  ("gmane.comp.handhelds.openmoko.announce" 6
   ((1 . 62))
   ((seen (1 . 62)) (save 54)) nil
   ((timestamp 18814 473)))

So I conclude the .newsrc.eld file is a never ending black hole that can
fill up with old groups, with no interface available to the user to
clean it up ever, short of open heart surgery on the .newsrc.eld file itself.

Apparently once a group falls off the gnus-topic-alist, its records
become orphan data in the .newsrc.eld file... a "memory leak"?

Also in ~/News there are files corresponding to those newsgroups with no
other way to clean them up other than going in by hand...

Nothing special in http://jidanni.org/comp/configuration/ to cause it.

Re: .newsrc.eld is a black hole for old groups

[Tassilo Horn]

jidanni@jidanni.org writes:

> Also in ~/News there are files corresponding to those newsgroups with
> no other way to clean them up other than going in by hand...

Does M-x gnus-agent-expire RET help?

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: .newsrc.eld is a black hole for old groups

[jidanni]

>>>>> "TH" == Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org> writes:
> Also in ~/News there are files corresponding to those newsgroups with
> no other way to clean them up other than going in by hand...
TH> Does M-x gnus-agent-expire RET help?
(gnus-agent-expire nil "gmane.comp.handhelds.openmoko.user" t)
"Expiry recovered 0 NOV entries, deleted 0 files, and freed 0.000000 B."
and nothing changed on disk or in .newsrc.eld.
I use http://jidanni.org/comp/configuration/ and
http://filebin.ca/afumqj/.newsrc.eld.bz2

Re: .newsrc.eld is a black hole for old groups

[Tassilo Horn]

jidanni@jidanni.org writes:

>>>>>> "TH" == Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org> writes:
>> Also in ~/News there are files corresponding to those newsgroups with
>> no other way to clean them up other than going in by hand...
> TH> Does M-x gnus-agent-expire RET help?
> (gnus-agent-expire nil "gmane.comp.handhelds.openmoko.user" t)
> "Expiry recovered 0 NOV entries, deleted 0 files, and freed 0.000000 B."
> and nothing changed on disk or in .newsrc.eld.

Hm, I don't know if it does anything with your .newsrc.eld, but at least
it should expire read and unmarked articles the agent cached that are
older than `gnus-agent-expire-days'.  At least here, it does so.

With regards to the .newsrc.eld issue.  I guess the deletion of groups
is not done, because when you subscribe to a group that was subscribed
some time ago, then gnus will automatically know which articles you've
already read.  And since there are only entries for groups you already
subscribed, it won't grow ad infimum.

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: .newsrc.eld is a black hole for old groups

[Vegard Vesterheim]

On Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:58:19 +0200 Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org> wrote:

> With regards to the .newsrc.eld issue.  I guess the deletion of groups
> is not done, because when you subscribe to a group that was subscribed
> some time ago, then gnus will automatically know which articles you've
> already read.  And since there are only entries for groups you already
> subscribed, it won't grow ad infimum.

Is there a way to delete a group *totally* in gnus, without editing
the .newsrc.eld file? 

Imagine that you want to reorganise your IMAP folders, and you use a
different IMAP-client to move messages between folders. Gnus will
still show you the old messages because of the cached information in
.newsrc.eld.

Deleting the group in the Server buffer, and then resubscribing the
group, in the hope that Gnus will get fresh information from the
IMAP-server, will not work either.

 - Vegard V -

Re: .newsrc.eld is a black hole for old groups

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Vegard Vesterheim <vegard.vesterheim@uninett.no>:

> Is there a way to delete a group *totally* in gnus, without editing
> the .newsrc.eld file?

I thought `k' in the *Group* buffer, followed by an `s', did the trick.
But I may be wrong...?

Re: .newsrc.eld is a black hole for old groups

[Tassilo Horn]

Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:

Hi Steinar,

>> Is there a way to delete a group *totally* in gnus, without editing
>> the .newsrc.eld file?
>
> I thought `k' in the *Group* buffer, followed by an `s', did the
> trick.  But I may be wrong...?

Here, `k' is not bound in *Group*...

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: .newsrc.eld is a black hole for old groups

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>:

> Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:

>>> Is there a way to delete a group *totally* in gnus, without editing
>>> the .newsrc.eld file?
>> 
>> I thought `k' in the *Group* buffer, followed by an `s', did the
>> trick.  But I may be wrong...?

> Here, `k' is not bound in *Group*...

Sorry.  I meant `C-k', which is bound to gnus-topic-kill-group which has
the documentation
 gnus-topic-kill-group is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `gnus-topic'.
 (gnus-topic-kill-group &optional N DISCARD)

 Kill the next N groups.

I _think_ I verified at one point in time that this command cleared the
group out of .newsrc.eld.  But... I'm not staking my life on it...

Re: .newsrc.eld is a black hole for old groups

[Dave Goldberg]

>>>>> Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>:
>> Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:

> Sorry.  I meant `C-k', which is bound to gnus-topic-kill-group which has
> the documentation
>  gnus-topic-kill-group is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `gnus-topic'.
>  (gnus-topic-kill-group &optional N DISCARD)

>  Kill the next N groups.

> I _think_ I verified at one point in time that this command cleared the
> group out of .newsrc.eld.  But... I'm not staking my life on it...

Yes, but you also need to have gnus-save-killed-list to nil, which I
think is not the default.  This keeps killed groups out of your
.newsrc.eld, but comes with a cost, as noted in the documentation:

  *If non-nil, save the list of killed groups to the startup file.
  If you set this variable to nil, you'll save both time (when starting
  and quitting) and space (both memory and disk), but it will also mean
  that Gnus has no record of which groups are new and which are old, so
  the automatic new newsgroups subscription methods become meaningless.

  You should always set `gnus-check-new-newsgroups' to `ask-server' or
  nil if you set this variable to nil.

  This variable can also be a regexp.  In that case, all groups that do
  not match this regexp will be removed before saving the list.

-- 
Dave Goldberg
david.goldberg6@verizon.net

Re: .newsrc.eld is a black hole for old groups

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Dave Goldberg <david.goldberg6@verizon.net>:

> Yes, but you also need to have gnus-save-killed-list to nil, which I
> think is not the default.  This keeps killed groups out of your
> .newsrc.eld, but comes with a cost, as noted in the documentation:

Hm... that variable is t in my file, and probably always had been t, so
I'm guessing this is something changed since the time I tested the
behaviour (which was a loooong time ago).