nnml group loosing marks

nnml group loosing marks

[Robert Epprecht]

I have seen this sporadically for maybe two weeks or so
with current CVS Gnus versions:

I enter a group of a high volume mailinglist, kill all
threads I don't want to read and mark some interesting
articles with '?'. The others are marked 'E' now.

Next time I enter gnus all the previously 'E' marked
messages are back, unread and the '?' messages have
vanished! (Yes I did '/ D': older '?' messages are still
there). It does not happen in all nnml groups but only in
some.

I did not track down what exactly happened to the
dormant articles yet, but can reproduce the disappearing
of the 'E' marks in one nnml group.

It is quite a disaster :-(   Somebody else sees it?

Robert Epprecht

PS: I might be offline for a few days now.

Re: nnml group loosing marks

[Andreas Jaeger]

Robert Epprecht <epprecht@cybercity.ch> writes:

> I have seen this sporadically for maybe two weeks or so
> with current CVS Gnus versions:
>
> I enter a group of a high volume mailinglist, kill all
> threads I don't want to read and mark some interesting
> articles with '?'. The others are marked 'E' now.
>
> Next time I enter gnus all the previously 'E' marked
> messages are back, unread and the '?' messages have
> vanished! (Yes I did '/ D': older '?' messages are still
> there). It does not happen in all nnml groups but only in
> some.
>
> I did not track down what exactly happened to the
> dormant articles yet, but can reproduce the disappearing
> of the 'E' marks in one nnml group.
>
> It is quite a disaster :-(   Somebody else sees it?

I have some high volume lists with lots of articles in it that I've
ticked ("!") and then only like to read the last e.g. 10 emails.  But
some how marks get lost - and some reappear after leaving XEmacs and
starting it again.

This is with nnml over NFS - and no other clients, I'm not sure what's
going on.

Andreas
-- 
 Andreas Jaeger
  SuSE Labs aj@suse.de
   private aj@arthur.inka.de
    http://www.suse.de/~aj

Re: nnml group loosing marks

[Robert Epprecht]

Robert Epprecht <epprecht@cybercity.ch> writes:

> I enter a group of a high volume mailinglist, kill all
> threads I don't want to read and mark some interesting
> articles with '?'. The others are marked 'E' now.
>
> Next time I enter gnus all the previously 'E' marked
> messages are back, unread 

(I have seen that in at least two groups and can repeat it
 in one peculiar high traffic group).

The problem still exists within that peculiar nnml group,
and I have found out a little bit more:

If I kill threads with 'k' they are marked 'E' as they should,
but are back unread after restarting Gnus. If I kill the same
thread by repeatedly pressing 'n' it does *not* show us unread
next time. (If I mix 'k' and 'n' everything will show as unread
next time). I could repeat the described behaviour half a dozen
times, so I *hope* it's not an accident. In other nnml groups I
see no difference in killing threads by pressing 'k' or 'nnn...'

What can I do to help you finding out what's going on?

BTW: The group has groups parameters set to
((expiry-wait . 36))
but other groups have something similar and do not make problems.

Robert Epprecht

Re: nnml group loosing marks

[Robert Epprecht]

Robert Epprecht <epprecht@cybercity.ch> writes:

I feel a bit embarrassed to insist on the matter and getting so few
reactions.  Do I talk nonsense?  Please tell me and I'll shut up ;-)

But this *does* look to me like a bug... (and a quite annoying one)

OK, I'll resume:
In (at least) one nnml group messages marked 'E' by killing threads
with 'k' (Topic parameter: (auto-expire . t)) reappear unread after
restarting Gnus. If I read the same thread by pressing 'n' repeatedly
they do stay expirable as they should IMHO.

Now I have found out a bit more:
As a work around I copied all dormant and all 'unread' messages to a
new nnml group (and adapted nnmail-split-methods accordingly) in the
hope things would start working again. Nope, same thing in the new
group. I killed a short thread (982-987) and saved .newsrc.eld
("debianUser" 3 ((1 . 978) (982 . 987) 1001 (1047 . 1048) ...
                           ^^^^^^^^^^^
I left Gnus, restarted it (yes the thread is back) saved again:
("debianUser" 3 ((1 . 978) 1001 (1047 . 1048) ...
No other difference in this group. What does it mean?

Then I found out, that I *can* kill *new* threads, but not *old* ones.
Could it have something to do with expiry, maybe agent expiry and
the ordinary one playing some obscure game with each other?

My knowledge about Gnus internals is very limited, my lisp debugging
experience non exixting, sorry for that. But any help would be very
much appreciated.

Robert Epprecht

Re: nnml group loosing marks

[Simon Josefsson]

Robert Epprecht <epprecht@cybercity.ch> writes:

> As a work around I copied all dormant and all 'unread' messages to a
> new nnml group (and adapted nnmail-split-methods accordingly) in the
> hope things would start working again. Nope, same thing in the new
> group. I killed a short thread (982-987) and saved .newsrc.eld
> ("debianUser" 3 ((1 . 978) (982 . 987) 1001 (1047 . 1048) ...
>                            ^^^^^^^^^^^
> I left Gnus, restarted it (yes the thread is back) saved again:
> ("debianUser" 3 ((1 . 978) 1001 (1047 . 1048) ...
> No other difference in this group. What does it mean?

nnml uses ~/Mail/foo/.marks instead of .newsrc.eld now, I think.
Modifying .newsrc.eld manually is not recommended.

> Then I found out, that I *can* kill *new* threads, but not *old* ones.
> Could it have something to do with expiry, maybe agent expiry and
> the ordinary one playing some obscure game with each other?

Perhaps, if you frob gnus-agent and gnus-agent-cache, does the problem
go away?

Re: nnml group loosing marks

[Robert Epprecht]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> Robert Epprecht <epprecht@cybercity.ch> writes:
>
>> As a work around I copied all dormant and all 'unread' messages to a
>> new nnml group (and adapted nnmail-split-methods accordingly) in the
>> hope things would start working again. Nope, same thing in the new
>> group. I killed a short thread (982-987) and saved .newsrc.eld
>> ("debianUser" 3 ((1 . 978) (982 . 987) 1001 (1047 . 1048) ...
>>                            ^^^^^^^^^^^
>> I left Gnus, restarted it (yes the thread is back) saved again:
>> ("debianUser" 3 ((1 . 978) 1001 (1047 . 1048) ...
>> No other difference in this group. What does it mean?
>
> nnml uses ~/Mail/foo/.marks instead of .newsrc.eld now, I think.
> Modifying .newsrc.eld manually is not recommended.

Maybe you misunderstood (?) I did not change this by hand, Gnus did.

> Perhaps, if you frob gnus-agent and gnus-agent-cache, does the problem
> go away?

Yes, it does, thank you very much.

This solves the problem for me (as I do use two different Gnus
incarnations for news and for mail), but I don't think it solves
the problem for someone using one Gnus for mail *and* news, as
probably most users will do.

Robert Epprecht

Re: nnml group loosing marks

[Simon Josefsson]

On Thu, 20 Jun 2002, Robert Epprecht wrote:

> > Perhaps, if you frob gnus-agent and gnus-agent-cache, does the problem
> > go away?
> 
> Yes, it does, thank you very much.
> 
> This solves the problem for me (as I do use two different Gnus
> incarnations for news and for mail), but I don't think it solves
> the problem for someone using one Gnus for mail *and* news, as
> probably most users will do.

Hm, do you access the same files in your two Gnusae?  That is a bad idea, 
I think.

Is anyone else seeing this bug?  Unless we can track it down, perhaps we 
should revert the gnus-agent default.

Re: nnml group loosing marks

[Kai Großjohann]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> Is anyone else seeing this bug?  Unless we can track it down, perhaps we 
> should revert the gnus-agent default.

Just a couple of days ago, I started to see `E' marks vanishing in
nnimap:INBOX.  (nnimap, not nnml.)  At first, I thought I was seeing
ghosts.

Hm.  Just a couple of days ago, I put the nnimap server under the
agent.  So these two might be related.

This is really quite strange.  But now it's at least clear that it
doesn't seem to depend on the backend.

kai
-- 
A large number of young women don't trust men with beards.  (BFBS Radio)

Re: nnml group loosing marks

[Paul Jarc]

Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) wrote:
> Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:
>> Is anyone else seeing this bug?  Unless we can track it down, perhaps we
>> should revert the gnus-agent default.
>
> Just a couple of days ago, I started to see `E' marks vanishing in
> nnimap:INBOX.  (nnimap, not nnml.)

I've been seeing this for a while in one of my nnmaildir groups, and
I've always had gnus-agent as nil.


paul

Re: nnml group loosing marks

[Simon Josefsson]

prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc) writes:

> Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) wrote:
>> Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:
>>> Is anyone else seeing this bug?  Unless we can track it down, perhaps we
>>> should revert the gnus-agent default.
>>
>> Just a couple of days ago, I started to see `E' marks vanishing in
>> nnimap:INBOX.  (nnimap, not nnml.)
>
> I've been seeing this for a while in one of my nnmaildir groups, and
> I've always had gnus-agent as nil.

gnus-agent-cache too?  (If gnus-agent is nil, gnus-agent-cache
shouldn't matter, but who knows.)

Re: nnml group loosing marks

[Paul Jarc]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> wrote:
> prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc) writes:
>> I've been seeing this for a while in one of my nnmaildir groups, and
>> I've always had gnus-agent as nil.
>
> gnus-agent-cache too?  (If gnus-agent is nil, gnus-agent-cache
> shouldn't matter, but who knows.)

No, that's t.  I'll set it to nil and see if anything changes.


paul

Re: nnml group loosing marks

[Robert Epprecht]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> (If gnus-agent is nil, gnus-agent-cache
> shouldn't matter, but who knows.)

Yes, setting gnus-agent-cache back to t does not seem to make
problems here.

Robert Epprecht

Re: nnml group loosing marks

[Simon Josefsson]

Robert Epprecht <epprecht@cybercity.ch> writes:

> Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:
>
>> (If gnus-agent is nil, gnus-agent-cache
>> shouldn't matter, but who knows.)
>
> Yes, setting gnus-agent-cache back to t does not seem to make
> problems here.

I don't understand, are you saying that everything works if you set
gnus-agent-cache to t?  That's the default value, but unless
gnus-agent is t what value gnus-agent-cache shouldn't matter.

Re: nnml group loosing marks

[Robert Epprecht]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> I don't understand, are you saying that everything works if you set
> gnus-agent-cache to t?  That's the default value, but unless
> gnus-agent is t what value gnus-agent-cache shouldn't matter.

Exactly, as long as gnus-agent is nil, I don't see any difference
caused by gnus-agent-cache.

Robert Epprecht

Re: nnml group loosing marks

[Paul Jarc]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> wrote:
> prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc) writes:
>> Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) wrote:
>>> Just a couple of days ago, I started to see `E' marks vanishing in
>>> nnimap:INBOX.  (nnimap, not nnml.)
>>
>> I've been seeing this for a while in one of my nnmaildir groups, and
>> I've always had gnus-agent as nil.
>
> gnus-agent-cache too?  (If gnus-agent is nil, gnus-agent-cache
> shouldn't matter, but who knows.)

I set it to nil, and the problem still happens.  I had thought this
might be related to nnmaildir's non-persistent article numbers (still
working on that), since it only happens when I restart Gnus.

Does this happen for anyone with a non-nnmaildir backend and with
gnus-agent set to nil?


paul

Re: nnml group loosing marks

[Andreas Jaeger]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> On Thu, 20 Jun 2002, Robert Epprecht wrote:
>
>> > Perhaps, if you frob gnus-agent and gnus-agent-cache, does the problem
>> > go away?
>> 
>> Yes, it does, thank you very much.
>> 
>> This solves the problem for me (as I do use two different Gnus
>> incarnations for news and for mail), but I don't think it solves
>> the problem for someone using one Gnus for mail *and* news, as
>> probably most users will do.
>
> Hm, do you access the same files in your two Gnusae?  That is a bad idea, 
> I think.
>
> Is anyone else seeing this bug?  Unless we can track it down, perhaps we 
> should revert the gnus-agent default.

As reported I see a smiliar bug - and I use only one Gnus.

Andreas
-- 
 Andreas Jaeger
  SuSE Labs aj@suse.de
   private aj@arthur.inka.de
    http://www.suse.de/~aj

Re: nnml group loosing marks

[Robert Epprecht]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> Hm, do you access the same files in your two Gnusae?

No, I don't.

Robert Epprecht