From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/60575 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Steven E. Harris" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: backing up read messages, and subscribed lists. Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 10:52:21 -0700 Organization: SEH Labs Message-ID: References: <813bqivjvo.fsf@adboyd.com> <4nackojd23.fsf@lifelogs.com> <81oe94xe9a.fsf@adboyd.com> <4n3bqghvtg.fsf@lifelogs.com> <81k6jsxblp.fsf@adboyd.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1121450216 9215 80.91.229.2 (15 Jul 2005 17:56:56 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 17:56:56 +0000 (UTC) Cc: ding@gnus.org Original-X-From: ding-owner+M9103@lists.math.uh.edu Fri Jul 15 19:56:48 2005 Return-path: Original-Received: from malifon.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.13]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1DtUPa-0003hm-5S for ding-account@gmane.org; Fri, 15 Jul 2005 19:55:46 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.math.uh.edu ident=lists) by malifon.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 1DtUMd-00069A-00; Fri, 15 Jul 2005 12:52:43 -0500 Original-Received: from util2.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.23]) by malifon.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 1DtUMZ-000695-00 for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Fri, 15 Jul 2005 12:52:39 -0500 Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by util2.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 4.30) id 1DtUMW-0000j2-54 for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Fri, 15 Jul 2005 12:52:36 -0500 Original-Received: from adsl-64-171-114-78.dsl.sndg02.pacbell.net ([64.171.114.78] helo=xenon.gnostech.com) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1DtUMV-000213-00 for ; Fri, 15 Jul 2005 19:52:35 +0200 Original-Received: from sharris by xenon.gnostech.com with local (Exim 4.50) id IJOKB9-0002L4-MB; Fri, 15 Jul 2005 10:52:21 -0700 Original-To: david@adboyd.com (J. David Boyd) Mail-Followup-To: david@adboyd.com (J. David Boyd), ding@gnus.org In-Reply-To: <81k6jsxblp.fsf@adboyd.com> (J. David Boyd's message of "Fri, 15 Jul 2005 12:44:50 -0400") User-Agent: Gnus/5.110004 (No Gnus v0.4) XEmacs/21.4.13 (cygwin32) X-Spam-Score: -4.9 (----) Precedence: bulk Original-Sender: ding-owner@lists.math.uh.edu Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:60575 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:60575 david@adboyd.com (J. David Boyd) writes: > It's no problem at all to set up a script that sends over my > newsrc.eld right at the end of the work day, and retrieves it from > home at the beginning of the work day. But that's not enough, and won't work properly if you use the agent for your IMAP groups. We've been over this a few times over the last couple of years. At present I use unison (rsync works fine too) to synchronize everything under ~/doc/news, excluding ~/doc/news/agent. I used to synchronize ~/.newsrc and ~/.newsrc.eld, but was advised against it. Supposedly the per-backend marks files take care of whatever state is represented in .newsrc.eld. However, you'll find that your IMAP groups don't behave properly after this kind of syncing. New messages appear as expected, but Gnus loses track of which read messages are on the server and which ones are marked for expiry. For example, if at work you received and read three new messages, then go home and synchronize your Gnus files, you'll find that Gnus at home won't realize that those three messages you read at work are present on the server. You can kick it into doing so by manually running `gnus-agent-expire-group', but this also has the unfortunate side-effect of losing your expiry marks previously set at home.¹ Note that I'm not syncing the agent files. My take on it is that the agent is good for local caching; I don't want to synchronize the cached copies of messages I've read in one location to another. But cached articles aside, apparently some extra files conveying some agent-related state must be necessary to prevent the lossy behavior I'm describing. Footnotes: ¹ Note that this is still the case even with an IMAP server that supports user-defined flags such as "gnus-expire" and "gnus-dormant". -- Steven E. Harris