Just Deleted all my mails - How?

[Ian Swainson <ian@qui-oui.com>]

Hi All,

Bit peeved, but I'm sure this is down to my complete misunderstanding of Gnus - 
scary thing is that it let me be so destructive:

I have an nnml group called 'Misc' which contains all my mail which doesn't fit 
into my other categories, defined thusly:

(setq gnus-select-method '(nnml "Inbox"))

(setq nnmail-split-methods
      '(
;:Emacs Groups
        
<loads of other groups>

	("Misc" "")
)
      )

The group became rather full, as it does every month, so I decided to archive 
it. What I normally do is tar and gzip up all the mails in the misc folder, and 
move them to another disk, all manually outside of Gnus. Problem is, Gnus 
totals don't get updated - it still thinks there is 1600 or whatever mails in 
the group. (I've posted about this before, as have others).

This time I thought I'd try to do it in Gnus. And I obviously understand Gnus 
even less than I thought, as I managed to delete all the mails rather than 
archive them. I'm a bit gutted about this. This is what I did:

I created (in my .gnus) a secondary select method thusly:

(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '(
					(nnfolder "Archive")))

Thinking that like my 'sent' nnfolder group, it would create me a file group, 
with multiple mails per file.

I then went into my Misc group, and using the menu, process-marked all the 
mails. I then used B m to move them (or so I thought) to my new group. Pressing 
Tab at the prompt, I got a list of my current groups plus a load of new groups 
called nnfolder+Archive:xxxx, for every nnml group, 'xxxx' being the name of 
the existing nnml group. I selected nnfolder+Archive:Misc and after a lot of 
disk activity, the mails seemed to be duly moved. I then subscribed to the 
nnfolder+Archive:Misc group, and selected it. The processor went to 100% (and 
stayed like that for ages), so I C-g 'd it. I then exited Gnus, and restarted, 
then re-selected the nnfolder+Archive:Misc and alas, it is empty. My misc group 
is also empty, and the mails seem to have disappeared from the disk.

What should I have done to archive these mails properly, and why did all the 
mails get deleted instead of moved?

Cheers,
Ian

--
fortune is silent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Made in Ireland~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ian Swainson           Kia Ora!         ian@qui-oui.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~http://www.qui-oui.com~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~