`gnus-agent-expire' - specifics?

`gnus-agent-expire' - specifics?

[Mike McEwan]

  Well I've been using `gnus-agent-expire' and it seems to work fine,
for articles that have been downloaded and have a corresponding entry
in the agent `history' file. 

  My question is, what is supposed to happen to the NOV lines of
articles that have *not* been downloaded? I have written an agent
download predicate function, via which I can limit the number of
articles downloaded to those not older than a certain number of
days. Useful, I find, when subscribing to large newsgroups for the
first time.

 However, as the headers for *all* articles are downloaded regardless,
I'm finding that the NOV lines of never downloaded articles remains in
my .overview files. This presumably means that gnus takes longer than
it needs to parse such files?

  When, if ever, do such NOV lines get nuked?

-- 
Mike.

Re: `gnus-agent-expire' - specifics?

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

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

>   When, if ever, do such NOV lines get nuked?

Oh, uhm, never.  I forgot about that.  *sigh*

Hm...  I'll have to think about how to approach this problem.

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

Re: `gnus-agent-expire' - specifics?

[Mike McEwan]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> Oh, uhm, never.  I forgot about that.  *sigh*
> 
> Hm...  I'll have to think about how to approach this problem.

  Well I had a think about it, hacked a solution, and then rejected it
as null and void :-(. I was nuking the NOV lines of articles in the
overview file with dates older then `gnus-agent-expire-days' that did
*not* have corresponding article files in my news directories. This is
fine when the NOV line date is an accurate reflection of when the
article header was downloaded, but I guess there are too many
instances when such a date bears little relation to when the article
was actually posted, arrived on the news server, and was
downloaded. Duh, I've realised the necessity for the agent history
files.

  With this in view, I was wondering if perhaps the best way to get
rid of redundant NOV lines might be if an extra line of some sort was
written to the history file for each group, detailing the highest
article *header* downloaded in a given session. Then, at the tail end
of current gnus-agent expire processing, the history file could be
scanned for the last `group header details' line with a date that was
less than or equal to current time minus `gnus-expire-days' (No NOV
lines would be deleted if the first `group header details' was greater
than the match value etc. etc.). Any NOV lines with article numbers
less than or equal to the `highest retrieved header' number would then
be nuked.

  An alternative would be to have a separate `history' file for
downloaded headers, but then there's probably too many files already
eh. 

  Just an idea, I'm in no way proffering this as the way to go, it's
just that I've wasted some time on it :-). What's the deal with those
.agentview files? I been pruning my .overviews, but these suckers seem 
to keep on growing (I think...).

-- 
Mike.

Re: `gnus-agent-expire' - specifics?

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

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

>   An alternative would be to have a separate `history' file for
> downloaded headers, but then there's probably too many files already
> eh. 

Since the .overview file shows the relative age of articles, I think
the expiry function should just delete all header lines that have
lower article numbers than the youngest of the expirable articles.

>   Just an idea, I'm in no way proffering this as the way to go, it's
> just that I've wasted some time on it :-). What's the deal with those
> .agentview files? I been pruning my .overviews, but these suckers seem 
> to keep on growing (I think...).

Oops.  I forgot about those as well.

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

Re: `gnus-agent-expire' - specifics?

[Mike McEwan]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> Since the .overview file shows the relative age of articles, I think
> the expiry function should just delete all header lines that have
> lower article numbers than the youngest of the expirable articles.

  Sounds okay. Of course this will only expire NOV lines in groups
where article bodies *have* been downloaded. I guess you could
question why anyone would subscribe to a group if all they ever
downloaded were the headers.
 
> Oops.  I forgot about those as well.

  5.6.4, maybe...

-- 
Mike.

Re: `gnus-agent-expire' - specifics?

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

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

>   Sounds okay. Of course this will only expire NOV lines in groups
> where article bodies *have* been downloaded.

Yup.  And it also either means doing a `directory-files' on the
directory or stat'ing a gazillion files, neither being fast...

Uhm -- no, we have the agentview file, which says which article has
been downloaded and stuff -- I can just use that!

But there's still the problem you point out...  Hm.

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