Re: Total expiry not working -- is clock skew the problem?

[Katsumi Yamaoka <yamaoka@jpl.org>]

>>>>> In <lspoe1hh8ze.fsf@drip.ca.boeing.com> Ted Stern wrote:

> On  7 Feb 2006 at 19:37 UTC-0800, Katsumi Yamaoka wrote:

>> (progn
>>   (setenv "TZ" "PST8PDT") ;; -0800
>>   (/ (time-to-seconds (time-since (current-time-string))) 3600))
>>  => 8.000075615555556

> Aha.  This could be the problem.  There is a problem with time-since
> input in my Emacs.

>       (progn
>         (setenv "TZ" "PST8PDT") ;; -0800
>           (time-since (current-time-string)))

> ,----[ lisp debugger output ]
>| Debugger entered--Lisp error: (wrong-type-argument listp "Wed Feb  8 12:45:24 2006")
>|   time-since("Wed Feb  8 12:45:24 2006")
>|   (progn (setenv "TZ" "PST8PDT") (time-since (current-time-string)))

That's exactly the cause of your problem.  Nnfolder will never
expire articles if that function doesn't work.  You seem to use
`time-since' defined in some Lisp module other than time-date.el.
For example, it is make-regexp.el:

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/tei/tei-emacs/tei-emacs/Attic/make-regexp.el?rev=1.2

I could reproduce the same error with it.  If you're using such
one, you can replace it with another one which doesn't contain
time-* functions.  For instance:

https://svn.r-project.org/ESS/trunk/lisp/make-regexp.el

Other possible solutions include:

1. Don't use it.
2. Load time-date.el explicitly.
3. Putting the following form in your ~/.emacs file (or
   ~/.gnus.el file) might do the trick.

(defadvice time-since (around reload-time-date_el activate)
  "Reload time-date.el if this function seems to have been overridden."
  (condition-case nil
      ad-do-it
    (error
     (load "time-date")
     ad-do-it)))

>> BTW, expiring might be executed in your machine eight hours earlier
>> than the time specified with expiry-wait.  It is because the
>> timestamp in the X-Gnus-Article-Number header is made by the
>> current-time-string function and doesn't have a timezone info.  For
>> instance:

I've modified nnfolder.el so as to use `message-make-date' which
generates a timezone info rather than `current-time-string' when
generating X-Gnus-Article-Number header.