Unexplained but consistent

Unexplained but consistent

[Harry Putnam]

The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
that has been posted to gnu.emacs.gnus as well.

[posted to gnu.emacs.gnus  and ding list]

Experimenting with the known problem of gnus loosing  track of postings
under agent, when those posts are removed from server, I've found a
phenomena that seems to be a partial solution.  Or maybe just
something else I don't understand about gnus.

The phenomena:

My nntp group gnu.emacs.gnus shows some 160 messages on the server.
My agentized gnu.emacs.gnus shows the same. (both entered with `C-u <RET>)
They both show the same message as earliest post (May 15)

(to make sure I got how many were current on server I deleted the
count for gnu.emacs.gnus in  ".newsrc" and "touched" it.

Now, close gnus and emacs and call gnus-no-server from the command
line.

`emacs -f gnus-no-server'

No nntp groups are displayed, even with "L" (as expected)
Then go `unplugged' (J j)
find a group (gnu.emacs.gnus) by using the `jump-to-group' command 
"j"

Enter with C-u <RET>  I get a summary buffer of posts whos earliest
date is May 2 and runs up to few on May 13  none of these are visible
in normal `unplugged' mode.  Another 204 "invisible posts" have been
unearthed.

The plot thickens:
scanning the file count and looking at dates in
News/agent...gnu/emacs/gnus  with:

`rgrep -r '^Date: ' News/agent...gnu/emacs/gnus': Shows dates going
back to Apr 24 (when I first started downloading that group)

 
`rgrep -r '^Date: ' News/agent...gnu/emacs/gnus |wc -l' shows a total
of 472.

So agent will show 160 (what is on server)       160
The routine I describe above shows another 204   204
A scan of directory shows 472                    ----
                                                 364



 472
-364
_____
 108  <== still invisible

Is this a way to see *some* of the invisible posts or have I run into
something else?