expired emails disappearing when intended to be filed elsewhere

expired emails disappearing when intended to be filed elsewhere

[Eric S Fraga]

Hello,

I have typically been sending expired emails from my mail general email
group into a catch all group called, not very imaginatively,
"expired".  This was done using the configuration accessible by "G c"
from the Group buffer.  As that expired archive has gotten too large to
manage properly, I decided I would expire/archive articles to monthly
groups using:

  (setq nnmail-expiry-target (concat "nnimap+ucl:expired-" (format-time-string "%Y%m"))) 

When emails expire now, they seem to disappear completely, given me the
impression that they have been deleted (which is a little frustrating
but that's life in the fast lane ;-).  The desired group does not get
created or, if I create it manually, does not get used.

Can anybody suggest what I may be doing wrong?  Probably something
really stupid... :(

Thanks,
eric

-- 
: Eric S Fraga, GnuPG: 0xFFFCF67D
: in Emacs 24.4.50.2 + Ma Gnus v0.10 + evil 1.0-dev
: BBDB version 3.1.1 (2014-03-11 17:17:00 -0500)

Re: expired emails disappearing when intended to be filed elsewhere

[Eric Abrahamsen]

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

> Hello,
>
> I have typically been sending expired emails from my mail general email
> group into a catch all group called, not very imaginatively,
> "expired".  This was done using the configuration accessible by "G c"
> from the Group buffer.  As that expired archive has gotten too large to
> manage properly, I decided I would expire/archive articles to monthly
> groups using:
>
>   (setq nnmail-expiry-target (concat "nnimap+ucl:expired-" (format-time-string "%Y%m"))) 
>
> When emails expire now, they seem to disappear completely, given me the
> impression that they have been deleted (which is a little frustrating
> but that's life in the fast lane ;-).  The desired group does not get
> created or, if I create it manually, does not get used.
>
> Can anybody suggest what I may be doing wrong?  Probably something
> really stupid... :(

I dunno why that doesn't work, but you might be safer setting the value
to a function:

(setq nnmail-expiry-target 'custom-expiration-function)

(defun custom-expiration-function (group)
  (concat "nnimap+ucl:expired-" (format-time-string "%Y%M")))

I don't really know, but that might be more likely to work.

Eric

Re: expired emails disappearing when intended to be filed elsewhere

[Eric S Fraga]

Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:

[...]

> I dunno why that doesn't work, but you might be safer setting the value
> to a function:
>
> (setq nnmail-expiry-target 'custom-expiration-function)
>
> (defun custom-expiration-function (group)
>   (concat "nnimap+ucl:expired-" (format-time-string "%Y%M")))
>
> I don't really know, but that might be more likely to work.

Thanks for this.

Yes, this works.  But so did what I tried first which was to set the
expiry-target to 'nnmail-fancy-expiry-target, as suggested in the info
manual.  However, what I did not explain in my original posting was that
the reason I tried to set the variable to a string directly is that the
function approach is very slow: each email is moved individually and the
groups are regenerated each time.  I receive several hundred emails a
day so the first expiry of the day takes minutes as a result!  My main
inbox is accessed via IMAP to Microsofts office365 service (a misnomer
;-).

Expiring to a string, set using the configuration accessed through "Gc",
expires all the articles in a few seconds.  Why that configuration works
but setting nnmail-expiry-target directly doesn't is beyond me.  I do
not understand the difference, and more importantly, what has happened
to the emails I expired with nnmail-expiry-target set to a string.  Very
strange!

Thanks again,
eric

-- 
: Eric S Fraga, GnuPG: 0xFFFCF67D
: in Emacs 24.4.50.2 + Ma Gnus v0.10 + evil 1.0-dev
: BBDB version 3.1.1 (2014-03-11 17:17:00 -0500)

Re: expired emails disappearing when intended to be filed elsewhere

[Eric Abrahamsen]

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

> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
>
> [...]
>
>> I dunno why that doesn't work, but you might be safer setting the value
>> to a function:
>>
>> (setq nnmail-expiry-target 'custom-expiration-function)
>>
>> (defun custom-expiration-function (group)
>>   (concat "nnimap+ucl:expired-" (format-time-string "%Y%M")))
>>
>> I don't really know, but that might be more likely to work.
>
> Thanks for this.
>
> Yes, this works.  But so did what I tried first which was to set the
> expiry-target to 'nnmail-fancy-expiry-target, as suggested in the info
> manual.  However, what I did not explain in my original posting was that
> the reason I tried to set the variable to a string directly is that the
> function approach is very slow: each email is moved individually and the
> groups are regenerated each time.  I receive several hundred emails a
> day so the first expiry of the day takes minutes as a result!  My main
> inbox is accessed via IMAP to Microsofts office365 service (a misnomer
> ;-).
>
> Expiring to a string, set using the configuration accessed through "Gc",
> expires all the articles in a few seconds.  Why that configuration works
> but setting nnmail-expiry-target directly doesn't is beyond me.  I do
> not understand the difference, and more importantly, what has happened
> to the emails I expired with nnmail-expiry-target set to a string.  Very
> strange!

Yup, I'm not going to be much help here. Once you've got Gnus up and
running (and done a round of expiration) , does simply evaluating
nnmail-expiry-target give you the proper string value, or do you find
that it's been re-set to nil or 'delete or something else?

You also might try setting it via customize instead, and seeing if that
does anything.

Other than that, I'm out of ideas!

E

Re: expired emails disappearing when intended to be filed elsewhere

[Eric S Fraga]

Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:

[...]

> Yup, I'm not going to be much help here. Once you've got Gnus up and
> running (and done a round of expiration) , does simply evaluating
> nnmail-expiry-target give you the proper string value, or do you find
> that it's been re-set to nil or 'delete or something else?

No, it looks fine.

> You also might try setting it via customize instead, and seeing if that
> does anything.

Customise doesn't let me specify the value as the result of a function
although obviously I could put it directly into the
custom-set... function in my initialisation.

> Other than that, I'm out of ideas!

But many thanks for trying!

-- 
: Eric S Fraga, GnuPG: 0xFFFCF67D
: in Emacs 24.4.50.2 + Ma Gnus v0.10 + evil 1.0-dev
: BBDB version 3.1.1 (2014-03-11 17:17:00 -0500)

Re: expired emails disappearing when intended to be filed elsewhere

[Eric S Fraga]

Dear all,

Further on my problems expiring email to a group specified by a string
in nnmail-expiry-target.

Having set nnimap-record-commands to t, and setting nnmail-expiry-target
to "expired-2014-04", I see the following in the *imag log* buffer when
I leave my main INBOX group:

,----
| 17:44:22 [outlook.office365.com] 3827 SELECT "INBOX".
| 17:44:22 [outlook.office365.com] 3828 UID COPY 84602,84604:84606 ...
| 17:44:24 [outlook.office365.com] 3829 SELECT "INBOX".
| 17:44:24 [outlook.office365.com] 3830 UID STORE 84859,84858,84857, ... 84602 +FLAGS.SILENT (\Deleted).
| 17:44:28 [outlook.office365.com] 3831 UID EXPUNGE 84859,84858,84857, ... 84602.
| 17:45:09 [outlook.office365.com] 3832 LIST "" "*".
| ...
| 17:45:09 [outlook.office365.com] 3852 EXAMINE "expired-2014-04".
`----

where ... replaces a number of email IDs or folders from the LIST
command.  What I see is the emails copied and then expunged and the
folder does appear in the list for that server.  However, when I try to
access that folder, I am getting the following:

,----
| Opening nnimap server on ucl-ephemeral...
| Opening connection to outlook.office365.com via tls...
| Quit trying to open server nnimap+ucl-ephemeral
| Opening nnimap server on ucl-ephemeral...failed: NO expired-2014-04 doesn't exist.
| gnus-group-read-ephemeral-group: Unable to contact server: NO expired-2014-04 doesn't exist.
`----

and that's it.  My emails are lost.  Somehow the copy doesn't seem to
actually create a proper group on the IMAP server.

thanks,
eric

-- 
: Eric S Fraga, GnuPG: 0xFFFCF67D
: in Emacs 24.4.50.2 + Ma Gnus v0.10 + evil 1.0-dev
: BBDB version 3.1.1 (2014-03-11 17:17:00 -0500)

Re: expired emails disappearing when intended to be filed elsewhere

[Eric S Fraga]

Hello all yet again,

following up on myself, it would appear that the group does eventually
get created and the emails now do seem to end up there.  Gnus seems to
get out of sync with the expiry group and I have to "C-u RET" on it to
get it to update.  "g" alone on the Group buffer tells me that there is
a group of out sync.

I'm keeping nnmail-expiry-target set to my (concat) function for now but
I do feel somewhat nervous...  Any clarity on what is happening would be
most welcome!

Thanks,
eric

-- 
: Eric S Fraga, GnuPG: 0xFFFCF67D
: in Emacs 24.4.50.2 + Ma Gnus v0.10 + evil 1.0-dev
: BBDB version 3.1.1 (2014-03-11 17:17:00 -0500)