Retrieve lost messages in agent directory

Retrieve lost messages in agent directory

[Harry Putnam]

I don't think this is a problem that gnus is responsible for.  I think it
happened from repeatedly rsyncing the full gnus setup form laptop to
Main machine and vis-versa.

I may have blown it on the command line or not really understand how
rsync works.  Or may have even been some other cause.  To get to the
punch line:

I have 2900 messages in gnu.emacs.gnus.  Only 700+ are displayed in
summary buffer when entered with C-u <RET>.  I wonder if there is a
way to get those articles back into the nov files?  Seems like it
should be a function similar to nnml-generate-nov-data-bases since the
nov files under agent are wholly owned by gnus.

I couldn't really tell if `gnus-request-regenerate' would help.  An 's'
search in gnus-info gives no hits on it.  egrepping in *.el files I
found it but could'nt really tell what the heck it does.

Getting back to rsync for a moment:

I hope someone here is well experienced with rsyncing Gnus setup from
place to place.  My proceedure has been:

I work and live all week in one city then go home to another city on
weekends or days off etc.  When going home I rsync my gnus setup to my
laptop like this (from laptop):

rsync -avz -e ssh reader@<Main-Machine>:/home/reader/Mail/ Mail/
rsync  " ditto ditto                                /News/ News/

Then conclude with:
scp reader@<Main-Machine>:/home/reader/.newsr* .

That copies to and overwrites the current .newsrc .newsrc.eld on
portable machine

Reverse the process when coming back to main machine.

I suspect I may have left off a trailing slash sometime or something
else like that.

I've since written scripts to make it harder to screw it up, but just
wondered if other rsyncers would see a problem in the above proceedure.

Re: Retrieve lost messages in agent directory

[Kai Großjohann]

Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> writes:

> I've since written scripts to make it harder to screw it up, but just
> wondered if other rsyncers would see a problem in the above proceedure.

You may wish to also copy ~/.nnmail-cache, but other than that I don't
see a problem with that.  Similar to the way I did it for quite some
time.  Now I just bite the bullet and read mail online -- makes German
Telekom much richer...

kai
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Re: Retrieve lost messages in agent directory

[Anil B. Somayaji]

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Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> writes:

> I hope someone here is well experienced with rsyncing Gnus setup from
> place to place.  My proceedure has been:

I use rsync extensively to synchronize my desktop and laptop machines
(where I mirror my whole home directory), and my home and school
machines (where I'm a bit more selective).  The main problem I see is
that you aren't using --delete and --force.  By default, rsync doesn't
delete files and directories at the destination that aren't present at
the source.  These options ensure that it does.  This is _dangerous_,
but if you are mirroring your personal files, it is probably what you
want (I like my deleted files to stay deleted).

To suit my taste, I'd do something like this:

  * Create a Common directory, move all the files you want to sync up
    into that directory.  You can make ~/Mail a symlink to
    ~/Common/Mail - gnus will work fine.  To move your .newsrc.eld to
    Common, though, I'd suggest changing gnus-startup-file to point to
    a file in Common, such as ~/Common/newsrc.  You will need a
    symlink for ~/.gnus.el, unless you twiddle with things in you
    .emacs.

  * Then, do something like this (assuming you are on desktop, and
    want to update laptop):

      rsync -a -v --delete --force -e ssh ~/Common laptop:.

    Note the lack of trailing slashes!

    I wouldn't bother with -z unless there is a slow connection
    between the machines.

    (Actually, I haven't timed it, but rsync is already pretty compute
    bound if there aren't too many files to transfer, so I don't see
    how -z would help over regular ethernet - but I could be wrong.)

In addition, I created conditional aliases on the two machines, so the
command I type indicates what direction I'm going in, and the wrong
command doesn't exist on the wrong machine.  I also have it echo what
exactly it is doing (say, "Sending Common to laptop").  If you ever
have remote windows up between your machines, this can be a
life-saver.

For the curious, I bothered setting this up for myself when I moved
all of my email to CFS.  I can now keep my personal email on our
department's web server without worring about No File Security (NFS).
So, in my case, what I synchronize is my ~/Crypt.  As you might
imagine, CFS could get upset if files and directories weren't mirrored
exactly.  I've been doing this for several months at least, and I've
found that rsync does this with no problems (knock on wood).

I hope this helps!

  --Anil

- -- 
Anil Somayaji (soma@cs.unm.edu)
http://www.cs.unm.edu/~soma
+1 505 872 3150
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