From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/29578 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Harry Putnam Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: Do we still do Incoming* files? Date: 17 Mar 2000 20:01:11 -0800 Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035166226 3501 80.91.224.250 (21 Oct 2002 02:10:26 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 02:10:26 +0000 (UTC) Return-Path: Original-Received: from lisa.math.uh.edu (lisa.math.uh.edu [129.7.128.49]) by mailhost.sclp.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A8748D051F for ; Fri, 17 Mar 2000 23:06:28 -0500 (EST) Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu (lists@Sina.HPC.UH.EDU [129.7.3.5]) by lisa.math.uh.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id WAB28762; Fri, 17 Mar 2000 22:04:25 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Fri, 17 Mar 2000 22:01:32 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from mailhost.sclp.com (postfix@sclp3.sclp.com [204.252.123.139]) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA14626 for ; Fri, 17 Mar 2000 22:01:22 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from mail.networkone.net (mail.networkone.net [209.144.112.75]) by mailhost.sclp.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 6EAD5D051F for ; Fri, 17 Mar 2000 23:01:32 -0500 (EST) Original-Received: (qmail 17935 invoked from network); 18 Mar 2000 04:09:15 -0000 Original-Received: from adsl-117-113.ln.networkone.net (HELO reader.ptw.com) (root@209.144.117.113) by mail.networkone.net with SMTP; 18 Mar 2000 04:09:15 -0000 Original-Received: (from reader@localhost) by reader.ptw.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id UAA02623; Fri, 17 Mar 2000 20:01:26 -0800 Original-To: ding@gnus.org In-Reply-To: lconrad@world.std.com's message of "17 Mar 2000 18:07:07 -0500" User-Agent: Gnus/5.0804 (Gnus v5.8.4) Emacs/20.5 Original-Lines: 59 Precedence: list X-Majordomo: 1.94.jlt7 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:29578 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:29578 A slightly different angle on this subject: I use even more thorough backup than gnus affords. Worrying about what gnus might do to itself or your mail is one thing, but I've found that I tinker with gnus more than any other piece of software I use. Trying different things out, experimenting with the advanced features etc., so in my mind there is another substantial risk of what I might inadvertantly do through ill informed tinkering. Probably far outweighing any developer foibles that might come up. I realize that most of the users on this list are probably too skilled to do harmfull things to there mail, but I have inadvertantly leveled both ~/Mail and ~/News on more than one occasion. Brought about buy tinkering with gnus. In that case, Incoming files won't help... he he. I'd recommend any linux/unix users should have a procmail recipe to backup all incoming mail to a directory unrelated to gnus. I have a procmail recipe and a shell script that keep the most recent 600 incoming messages. The script is just a little "sed" script that deletes anything over 600 files, like: rm `ls -t /home/reader/spool/backup/[0-9]* | sed -e 1,600d` 2> /dev/null And have procmail duplicate *all* incoming mail to ~/spool/backup/ in one message per file format. :0 c backup/. I run the sed script whenever the spirit moves me... So I really usually have something like 1,000 of the most recent messages. I keep the variable to delete Incoming set to "t" as a matter of course because of the safer technique detailed above. I also keep a "nndir" group of the backup directory in case I want to respool something or just need to have a look for one reason or another. I've found it to be quite handy having that backup directory on many many occasions. It does cost a little disk space, but with a single user machine that has 30 Gigs.... who cares?