auto-compressing nnml articles and overview files

auto-compressing nnml articles and overview files

[Ted Zlatanov]

Due to disk space constraints I would like to automatically compress
nnml articles when they are saved to disk, and decompress them on the
way back.  Does Gnus (or Emacs, behind the scenes) support such a
thing?

Also, I have some large overview files in ~/News/overview,
e.g. "nnimap.mail.lifelogs.com.ding.1047497850.novcache".
Considering I don't use the Agent, do I need those overview files?
They seem to be caching the gnus-newsgroup-data.  Can I remove them
and regenerate them later, either automatically or manually?

Thanks
Ted

Re: auto-compressing nnml articles and overview files

[Jesper Harder]

Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:

> Due to disk space constraints I would like to automatically compress
> nnml articles when they are saved to disk, and decompress them on
> the way back.  Does Gnus (or Emacs, behind the scenes) support such
> a thing?

I don't know.  But the 'todo' file suggests that it might just work:

  * Support for zipped folders for all backends this makes sense for.
    Most likely using jka-compr. (It has been suggested that this do
    work but I think it should be verified for all backends.)

You'd probably have to frob `nnml-use-compressed-files'.

Re: auto-compressing nnml articles and overview files

[Kevin Greiner]

Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:

> Also, I have some large overview files in ~/News/overview,
> e.g. "nnimap.mail.lifelogs.com.ding.1047497850.novcache".
> Considering I don't use the Agent, do I need those overview files?
> They seem to be caching the gnus-newsgroup-data.  Can I remove them
> and regenerate them later, either automatically or manually?

If these files are actually named as shown, they have nothing to do
with the Agent.  The agent's files are named .overview and they are
placed in the agent's own directory structure.  I did a 30 sec check
and found that the nnimap backend creates files whose name ends with
.novcache.  You should look there to decide if these can be removed.

Kevin

Re: auto-compressing nnml articles and overview files

[Simon Josefsson]

Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:

> Also, I have some large overview files in ~/News/overview,
> e.g. "nnimap.mail.lifelogs.com.ding.1047497850.novcache".
> Considering I don't use the Agent, do I need those overview files?
> They seem to be caching the gnus-newsgroup-data.  Can I remove them
> and regenerate them later, either automatically or manually?

It is safe to remove, if you agentize your nnimap servers.

** ~/News/overview/ not used.

As a result of the following change, the ~/News/overview/ directory is
not used any more.  You can safely delete the entire hierarchy.

** gnus-agent

The Gnus Agent has seen a major update.  It is now enabled by default,
and all nntp and nnimap servers from `gnus-select-method' and
`gnus-secondary-select-method' are agentized by default.  Earlier only
the server in `gnus-select-method' was agentized by the default, and the
agent was disabled by default.  When the agent is enabled, headers are
now also retrieved from the Agent cache instead of the backends when
possible.  Earlier this only happened in the unplugged state.  You can
enroll or remove servers with `J a' and `J r' in the server buffer.
Gnus will not download articles into the Agent cache, unless you
instruct it to do so, though, by using `J u' or `J s' from the Group
buffer.  You revert to the old behaviour of having the Agent disabled
by customizing `gnus-agent'.  Note that putting `(gnus-agentize)' in
~/.gnus is not needed any more.