agent overview downloads

agent overview downloads

[Ken Raeburn]

I'm not quite caught up on my `ding' mail, though I've skimmed the
subjects; apologies if this has come up and I missed it.

Back in October, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> replied to
Felix Lee:

> > > > how do I tell agent I only want ten groups fetched every
> > > > time I "J s"?  my newsrc has a couple hundred groups that
> > > > I'm vaguely interested in but don't read often.
> > > Fiddle with the categories.
> > 
> > as far as I can tell, fiddling with categories only affects
> > article fetching, not overview-fetching, right?
> 
> Yup.
> 
> > I really don't need to spend an hour waiting for overview data from
> > 300 groups I rarely read.
> 
> Then just unsubscribe the groups you don't read very often.

I'm experimenting with using nnagent now, using qgnus-0.22, and it
really seems to want to download all the overviews.

I nuked the "agent" directory, just so I could try starting over.
Then double-checked that no mention of agent was in .newsrc.eld, and
started up gnus for the first time in that emacs session.

Edited the "default" category to change the predicate from "true"
(seems to be the default, contrary to what the info file says) to
"false".  Defined a new predicate named "t" with a predicate of
"true".

In the servers buffer, tried adding my default (nntp) server to the
agent, was told it was already there; removed and re-added just to be
sure.

In the group buffer, added alt.books.david-weber to category "t".
This is the only group that has been added to any category.

At this point, agent/lib/categories contains:

	((t true nil ("alt.books.david-weber")) (default false nil nil))

and agent/lib/servers contains:

	((nntp "cambridge-news.cygnus.com"))

I hit "J s" ... and watched Gnus start downloading a bunch of
overviews.  It appears to be going alphabetically, starting in
alt.binaries with a lot of erotic-pictures groups.  But those groups
are all unsubscribed.  (They are not listed as killed, mostly through
oversight, but from what you told Felix, that should be enough.)

So, at least in my case, unsubscribing doesn't appear to be enough to
prevent the overview downloading.  I don't want all that data
downloaded to my laptop with its relatively limited disk space and
connection bandwidth.  But I do want to retain read-article info and
such for some groups I don't want the agent handling.

(For that matter, I don't like the idea of having to unsubscribe to
high-traffic groups I do like to read sometimes when well-connected,
but don't need to have available when I'm not connected, and *really*
don't want to fetch overview data for when I'm dialed in on a slow
link.  Can't we have some other way than subscribedness to decide
whether the agent should handle a group?  If nothing else, a separate
group level threshold variable?  How about noticing when a predicate
evaluates to "false" without reference to article data?)

Any suggestions?

Ken

Re: agent overview downloads

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Ken Raeburn <raeburn@cygnus.com> writes:

> Edited the "default" category to change the predicate from "true"
> (seems to be the default, contrary to what the info file says)

Yup.  Fix in Quassia Gnus v0.23.

> So, at least in my case, unsubscribing doesn't appear to be enough to
> prevent the overview downloading.  I don't want all that data
> downloaded to my laptop with its relatively limited disk space and
> connection bandwidth.  But I do want to retain read-article info and
> such for some groups I don't want the agent handling.

Makes sense.  I'll add a level variable that will make the Agent skip
groups with higher levels altogether.

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