From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/34358 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Rob Browning Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Very unhappy (again). What happened? "B r" marked all unread as read. Date: 21 Jan 2001 13:58:21 -0600 Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: <87r91wu17m.fsf@raven.localnet> NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035170300 30021 80.91.224.250 (21 Oct 2002 03:18:20 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 03:18:20 +0000 (UTC) Return-Path: Original-Received: from karazm.math.uh.edu (karazm.math.uh.edu [129.7.128.1]) by mailhost.sclp.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id BC7F6D049D for ; Sun, 21 Jan 2001 14:59:05 -0500 (EST) Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu (lists@Sina.HPC.UH.EDU [129.7.3.5]) by karazm.math.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAC09516; Sun, 21 Jan 2001 13:58:57 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Sun, 21 Jan 2001 13:58:15 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from mailhost.sclp.com (postfix@66-209.196.61.interliant.com [209.196.61.66] (may be forged)) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA04363 for ; Sun, 21 Jan 2001 13:58:05 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from dsl-198-92-137-161.constant.com (dsl-198-92-137-161.constant.com [198.92.137.161]) by mailhost.sclp.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 483E1D049D for ; Sun, 21 Jan 2001 14:58:34 -0500 (EST) Original-Received: from raven.localnet (raven.localnet [192.168.1.7]) by dsl-198-92-137-161.constant.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B0E1917DD3 for ; Sun, 21 Jan 2001 13:58:28 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: by raven.localnet (Postfix, from userid 1000) id D399914327; Sun, 21 Jan 2001 13:58:22 -0600 (CST) Original-To: ding@gnus.org User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) Emacs/20.7 Precedence: list X-Majordomo: 1.94.jlt7 Original-Lines: 57 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:34358 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:34358 I was trying to clear up some long-term problems with my split rules, and so after I figured out what I really wanted, I changed the rules, and then tested "B r" on a ticked message. This was to make sure gnus was preserving marks across respools. Last time (about a year ago?) I tried it, it didn't, and I lost marks for (as I recall) over 5000 messages. I still haven't recovered from that -- I just left that group (my old inbox) to be dealt with later, and hoped that any things I missed, people would just badger me about. This time I thought I'd be safer, and in fact, in the test this time, the tick was preserved. So I thought it would be OK to proceed. I marked *all* the messages in my inbox (a few thousand) with the process mark, and then ran a "B r". After grinding for a while, it finished. Along the way, it just converted all my unread messages to read (i.e. "O"). And now they're mixed in with all the stuff that was scheduled for deletion (hundreds of messages) @#$%@#$%#&$%^#! Is this intentional? I really hope not. Every time I think I've gotten conservative enough with my gnus usage, and I try something to make my mail mess saner, it seems like gnus just kicks me in the head again. Last time, gnus just killed all the marks. I guess this is at least an improvement. I *REALLY* wish gnus would get backends that store the marks with the group directory -- I'll need to look in to the maildir backend maybe. At least then there would be a sane way to protect yourself against this kind of thing: "cp -a inbox inbox.safe.tmp", do potentially really dangerous thing with gnus, and if failure, quit emacs, "rm -r inbox; mv inbox.safe.tmp inbox". In this case, I did cp -a my inbox, ahead of time, but that doesn't really help since now it's out of sync with all the marks in the newsrc.eld file. And even if I'd copied that too, it would be out of sync with whatever messages got duplicated or moved to other directories during the re-split. There seems to be no way, short of copying my entire mail tree, which is hundreds of megabytes, before any even slightly questionable action. Trouble is that I only find out what's questionable *after* it's too late. A good friend of mine switched to mutt a while ago after a couple of similar experiences to the above. He's still not happy there, but at least things aren't getting trashed as often. Don't get me wrong, there are a *lot* of things I really like about gnus, and I'd really rather work them out, but it seems like I just *keep* getting nailed. Sorry for the griping, but I'm just upset... -- Rob Browning PGP=E80E0D04F521A094 532B97F5D64E3930