nnimap group customization lost after login failure?

nnimap group customization lost after login failure?

[Matthias Andree]

Hi,

I am Gnus using with three IMAP servers currently, defined in
gnus-secondary-select-methods.

On login failure (^G being one of them), I seem to lose all group
customizations unless I tell Gnus to switch to "offline" mode (I don't
know the exact circumstances when Gnus offers this option and asks me),
so the next time, Gnus will ask me whether I want to subscribe to the
groups (listing them in the minibuffer), and all options like Posting
Styles (to set the address) or the To- or List addresses seem to be
lost.

Have I misconfigured Gnus or is there a bug? I'd think that data for a
server must not be touched or removed when I can't connect and I tell
Gnus "don't go offline". Apparently Gnus thinks the groups no longer
exist in this case "cannot connect, don't go offline".

-- 
Matthias Andree

Re: nnimap group customization lost after login failure?

[Simon Josefsson]

Matthias Andree <ma@dt.e-technik.uni-dortmund.de> writes:

> Hi,
>
> I am Gnus using with three IMAP servers currently, defined in
> gnus-secondary-select-methods.
>
> On login failure (^G being one of them), I seem to lose all group
> customizations unless I tell Gnus to switch to "offline" mode (I don't
> know the exact circumstances when Gnus offers this option and asks me),
> so the next time, Gnus will ask me whether I want to subscribe to the
> groups (listing them in the minibuffer), and all options like Posting
> Styles (to set the address) or the To- or List addresses seem to be
> lost.
>
> Have I misconfigured Gnus or is there a bug? I'd think that data for a
> server must not be touched or removed when I can't connect and I tell
> Gnus "don't go offline". Apparently Gnus thinks the groups no longer
> exist in this case "cannot connect, don't go offline".

This seem to be a bug, if it happens easily (C-g can cause data
corruption by design, but rarely does in practice).  I have never seen
this, but I have a few nnimap servers that I ssh tunnel, but rarely
bother to set up the ssh tunnel for before starting Gnus.  Hm, could
you debug it further?  Or come up with a simple way to reproduce it?

Re: nnimap group customization lost after login failure?

[Matthias Andree]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> This seem to be a bug, if it happens easily (C-g can cause data
> corruption by design, but rarely does in practice).  I have never seen
> this, but I have a few nnimap servers that I ssh tunnel, but rarely
> bother to set up the ssh tunnel for before starting Gnus.  Hm, could
> you debug it further?  Or come up with a simple way to reproduce it?

I am totally at a loss when debugging elisp. However, I've seen this
happen when I press ^G when nnimap queries the user/login name for the
IMAP server. This causes Gnus to ask me "...cannot connect, go offline?"
If I press "y", everything's fine, if I press "n" however, the
subscriptions and group settings are lost.

-- 
Matthias Andree

Re: nnimap group customization lost after login failure?

[Simon Josefsson]

Matthias Andree <ma@dt.e-technik.uni-dortmund.de> writes:

> Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:
>
>> This seem to be a bug, if it happens easily (C-g can cause data
>> corruption by design, but rarely does in practice).  I have never seen
>> this, but I have a few nnimap servers that I ssh tunnel, but rarely
>> bother to set up the ssh tunnel for before starting Gnus.  Hm, could
>> you debug it further?  Or come up with a simple way to reproduce it?
>
> I am totally at a loss when debugging elisp. However, I've seen this
> happen when I press ^G when nnimap queries the user/login name for the
> IMAP server. This causes Gnus to ask me "...cannot connect, go offline?"
> If I press "y", everything's fine, if I press "n" however, the
> subscriptions and group settings are lost.

I'll try to reproduce it, I have one server which I typically C-g at
user/login during startup since I don't bother to acquire Kerberos
ticket in the proper realm first and nnimap falls back to plaintext
authentication, but I don't recall pressing either y or n after C-g.
Maybe I just C-g twice.

Re: nnimap group customization lost after login failure?

[Matthias Andree]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> I'll try to reproduce it, I have one server which I typically C-g at
> user/login during startup since I don't bother to acquire Kerberos
> ticket in the proper realm first and nnimap falls back to plaintext
> authentication, but I don't recall pressing either y or n after C-g.
> Maybe I just C-g twice.

There is another way to lose nnimap data:

when Gnus queries the password, press ^G: All subscriptions are
gone. When I re-add them, all customizations I had made before the ^G
are lost. I don't know if they are lost when the server goes to denied
state, or when I re-add the subscriptions, but this is a critical bug
and should be fixed ASAP.

Can anybody help?

-- 
Matthias Andree

Re: nnimap group customization lost after login failure?

[Simon Josefsson]

Matthias Andree <ma@dt.e-technik.uni-dortmund.de> writes:

> Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:
>
>> I'll try to reproduce it, I have one server which I typically C-g at
>> user/login during startup since I don't bother to acquire Kerberos
>> ticket in the proper realm first and nnimap falls back to plaintext
>> authentication, but I don't recall pressing either y or n after C-g.
>> Maybe I just C-g twice.
>
> There is another way to lose nnimap data:
>
> when Gnus queries the password, press ^G: All subscriptions are
> gone. When I re-add them, all customizations I had made before the ^G
> are lost. I don't know if they are lost when the server goes to denied
> state, or when I re-add the subscriptions, but this is a critical bug
> and should be fixed ASAP.
>
> Can anybody help?

I cannot reproduce it, I press ^G at the password prompt on one server
at almost every Gnus startup, and the groups still stay around.  Do
you have any customization that clean up zombie or unknown groups, or
something like that?  Or invoke some command that clean out
zombie/unknown groups?

Re: nnimap group customization lost after login failure?

[Matthias Andree]

On Thu, 31 Jul 2003, Simon Josefsson wrote:

> I cannot reproduce it, I press ^G at the password prompt on one server
> at almost every Gnus startup, and the groups still stay around.  Do
> you have any customization that clean up zombie or unknown groups, or
> something like that?  Or invoke some command that clean out
> zombie/unknown groups?

I had this line

'(gnus-check-bogus-newsgroups t)

in custom-set-variables.

I wonder if this might have been it (I'll follow up later), and if so,
why Gnus considers groups of non-reachable servers bogus. I'd think Gnus
can only make a definitive decision "bogus or not" when it's plugged and
online and connected to the nnimap server.

-- 
Matthias Andree