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Subject: .newsrc.eld is a black hole for old groups
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 02:29:51 +0800
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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.