a big .newsrc.eld is *fragile*

a big .newsrc.eld is *fragile*

[Steinar Bang]

This point comes up from time to time: a big .newsrc.eld holding a lot 
of the status information of Gnus is *fragile*.

It's fragile because we risk losing a *lot* of _mostly_ _static_
information, if the .newsrc.eld is corrupted 

Right now I had XEmacs crash under me (probably because I exhausted
the virtual memory) and this caused me to have a .newsrc.eld file of
size 0 bytes.

Luckily I have a crontab job copying this file to a machine that takes 
real backups.  Less luckily this crontab job hasn't been running since 
I updated my system from RedHat 5.0 to S.u.S.E. 5.3 on january 8...:-( 

One thing is the tickmarks that has disappeared.  Far worse is the
group information that may have gone away.

Re: a big .newsrc.eld is *fragile*

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:

> It's fragile because we risk losing a *lot* of _mostly_ _static_
> information, if the .newsrc.eld is corrupted 

That's true.  But doesn't Emacs create backup files when you save it?
Or have you switched that off?

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

Re: a big .newsrc.eld is *fragile*

[Steinar Bang]

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

> Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:
>> It's fragile because we risk losing a *lot* of _mostly_ _static_
>> information, if the .newsrc.eld is corrupted 

> That's true.  But doesn't Emacs create backup files when you save it?
> Or have you switched that off?

I switched that off in 1993 (because of a problem with PC-NFS that
kept a reference to the inode of the old version of a file, ie. edits
from emacs never showed up on Windoze/DOS) and I rather liked that
behaviour so I stuck with it, even after PC-NFS stopped being an
issue. 

Is it possible to turn that on for just ~/.newsrc.eld these days?

Re: a big .newsrc.eld is *fragile*

[Colin Rafferty]

Steinar Bang writes:
>>>>>> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>:
>> Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:

>>> It's fragile because we risk losing a *lot* of _mostly_ _static_
>>> information, if the .newsrc.eld is corrupted 

>> That's true.  But doesn't Emacs create backup files when you save it?
>> Or have you switched that off?

> I switched that off in 1993 ... and I rather liked that
> behaviour so I stuck with it, even after PC-NFS stopped being an
> issue. 

You are a brave man.

> Is it possible to turn that on for just ~/.newsrc.eld these days?

(defadvice gnus-save-newsrc-file (around backup activate compile)
  "Make sure the .newsrc.eld file has a backup."
  (let ((version-control nil))
    ad-do-it))

-- 
Colin

Re: a big .newsrc.eld is *fragile*

[Karl Kleinpaste]

Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:
> Is it possible to turn that on for just ~/.newsrc.eld these days?

I would think that it would be possible to specify make-backup-files
as buffer-local to *Group*.

Re: a big .newsrc.eld is *fragile*

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:

> Is it possible to turn that on for just ~/.newsrc.eld these days?

You can do that from `gnus-save-quick-newsrc-hook'.

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

Re: a big .newsrc.eld is *fragile*

[Colin Rafferty]

Colin Rafferty writes:
> Steinar Bang writes:

>> Is it possible to turn that on for just ~/.newsrc.eld these days?

> (defadvice gnus-save-newsrc-file (around backup activate compile)
>   "Make sure the .newsrc.eld file has a backup."
>   (let ((version-control nil))
>     ad-do-it))

Oops.

I meant to bind `make-backup-files'.

-- 
Colin

Re: a big .newsrc.eld is *fragile*

[Hrvoje Niksic]

Colin Rafferty <craffert@ms.com> writes:

> > I switched that off in 1993 ... and I rather liked that behaviour
> > so I stuck with it, even after PC-NFS stopped being an issue.
> 
> You are a brave man.

I, for one, can't stand backup files.  I turn them off in every editor 
that I use.  I have nothing against auto-saving, though -- it's just
the buggers with tidles at the end of the name that get on my nerves.