nnmairix configuration

[Dan Davison <davison@stats.ox.ac.uk>]

I can set up an nnmairix server and perform a search, but the results
are not appearing in any groups in a way that I understand. This is with
gnus v5.13, and dovecot serving locally-stored maildirs via nnimap. The
only way I can think of to describe my poblem is a blow-by-blow
description I'm afraid. Thanks to David Engster for the help getting to
this point on a previous thread.

From a clean start (no nnmairix servers, and no maildirs containing
mairix in their name), I do

1. `G b c' to set up a nnmairix server (name "general", backend
   "nnimap:dc", search group "found", yes to maildir++)

2. That causes a group named nnmairix+general:found to appear

3. It also creates a maildir named zz_mairix-found-1; in addition to
   cur,tmp,new this contains a file called maildirfolder.

4. `G b i' to perform a search. In the message buffer I see "Matched 5
   mesages". nnmairix+general:found now has a zero next to it whereas
   initially it had an asterisk.

5. maildir zz_mairix-found-1 now has two extra files:
   dovecot.index.log and dovecot-uidlist

6. In addition, a new maildir named .zz_mairix-found-1 has been created
   containing the 5 symlinks in cur/. Unlike the maildir without the
   initial '.', this one has no extra files (i.e. no files named
   dovecot.index.log dovecot-uidlist maildirfolder)

7. 'g' in the group buffer makes the empty nnmairix+general:found
   disappear; 'L' brings it back with a zero next to it showing it's
   empty.

8. At this point I feel like I should be seeing those 5 search hits
   which I know are in .zz_mairix-found-1, and I start making it up as I
   go along. I try manually subscribing to .zz_mairix-found-1 ('^'
   followed by <space> on nnimap:dc, followed by u on
   .zz_mairix-found-1). A group named .zz_mairix-found-1 now appears,
   and 'g' causes 2 messages to appear in that group. Why 2 and not 5?

9. I now try a new search, resulting in 1902 hits. The group buffer is
   unaltered until I hit 'g' at which point 277 of the hits appear in
   .zz_mairix-found-1. They are all valid hits, but where did 277 come
   from when there were 1902 hits? And anyway, why are they only
   appearing in this maildir with the '.' at the beginning of its name,
   and not in the group that was created by `G b c'?

Thanks for any further help,

Dan