Recovering damaged agent groups

Recovering damaged agent groups

[Robert Epprecht]

Hello,
I need advice how to recover some agent groups after an accident.

While downloading I ran out of disk space (shame over me, didn't run
gnus-agent-expire for quite some time). Maybe also the fact, that my
connection to the ISP had broken down while downloading a few minutes
ago contributet to the disaster... After cleaning my disk and running
gnus-agent-expire I tried to read news. But now my agent is very con-
fused and doesn't work any longer the way it should.

gnu.emacs.help (thats likely to be the group, that was downloaded when
the crash occured), showed (only) the ticked articles the normal way,
but all the others where marked '@'. Articles that had been downloaded
in a prior session where also marked '@' but could be read normally.
New articles (marked '@' too) where not yet downloaded (gnu.emacs.help
runs under the predicate 'true'). I marked them all with '%' and down-
loaded them. After that they where still marked '@' and 'SPACE' or `n`
sayd that there where no articles left. But 'RET' worked now, and so I
could read and save them.

Now the situation is different:
Groups that where downloaded *before* gnu.emacs.help still work.
gnu.emacs.help: 'g' increases the number of unread articles shown in
the group buffer, but if I enter the group there's nothing there (only
a dormant article). It also seems, that all the groups coming *after*
gnu.emacs.help are not downloaded.

What can I do to fix these groups?
(I'm running Gnus 5.6.42 in GNU Emacs 20.2 on Linux)

Any help would be appreciated very much.
Thanks a lot!

Robert Epprecht

Re: Recovering damaged agent groups

[Mike McEwan]

Robert Epprecht <epprecht@logon.ch> writes:

> It also seems, that all the groups coming *after*
> gnu.emacs.help are not downloaded.
> 
  You should probably upgrade to 5.6.43. There's a fix to cater for
the situation when a group's .agentview file doesn't exist or is empty 
following expiry.

  To see if this is your problem, try putting `((nnnn . t))', where `nnnn'
is the number of the last downloaded header for the group, in the
appropriate .agentview file, creating .agentview if it doesn't exist. 

-- 
Mike.

Re: Recovering damaged agent groups

[Robert Epprecht]

Mike McEwan <mike@lotusland.demon.co.uk> writes:

> Robert Epprecht <epprecht@logon.ch> writes:
>
> > It also seems, that all the groups coming *after*
> > gnu.emacs.help are not downloaded.
> >
>   You should probably upgrade to 5.6.43.

That was it!

(-; I had already downloaded 5.6.43 but thought to straighten
    things out before upgrading. Wrong way round, this time ;-)

Thanks a lot for the quick and helpfull answer!

Robert

Re: Recovering damaged agent groups

[Robert Epprecht]

Hello,

as I reported before I have problems with some agent groups after a crash.
Mike McEwan gave me the hint to upgrade to 5.6.43 which helped in some
groups, but not in all:

If I press 'g' the article count in the *Group* buffer does increase,
but when I enter these groups ( after 'J s' and `J j`) there's nothing
there. The agent doesn't seem to download anything from these groups,
while other groups work ok.

Putting ((nnnn . t)) in .agentview (with nnnn being the number of the
last downloaded article) didn't change the situation.
(I did not change the .overview files, should I have done this? How?)

What can I do, to fix my agent?
(I'm running Gnus 5.6.43 in GNU Emacs 20.2 on Linux)

Any help would be appreciated very much. Thanks a lot!
 
Robert Epprecht

Re: Recovering damaged agent groups

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Robert Epprecht <epprecht@logon.ch> writes:

> What can I do, to fix my agent?

Try removing all the files from the directories of the affected
groups, and go from there.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen