Re: Getting new mail really slow with nnml marks

[David Z Maze <dmaze@MIT.EDU>]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:
SJ> On Wed, 17 Oct 2001, David Z Maze wrote:
 DZM> Since the nnml not-in-newsrc.eld mark code got added, sucking in new
 DZM> mail has been really slow for me.  Setting (setq gnus-verbose-backends
 DZM> 10) and pressing 'g' from the group buffer reveals that Gnus is
 DZM> reading, updating, and writing the mark files for every single group,
 DZM> regardless of whether or not it has new mail.
SJ> 
SJ> Since 2001-09-08 this is precisely what should be happening.  Have you
SJ> checked out since then?

Yeah; I typically update once a week or so, depending on how broken
ding makes the CVS version sound.  :-)  Just updated again, and the
problem is still there.

SJ> If so, could you quote the exact messages from the backend?

Reading active file from news via nntp...
Reading active file via nnml...
nnml: Reading incoming mail from pop...
Wrote /afs/sipb.mit.edu/user/dmaze/Mail/mail/lists/gnus/ding/6328
Wrote /afs/sipb.mit.edu/user/dmaze/Mail/mail/lists/handhelds/familiar/936
Wrote /afs/sipb.mit.edu/user/dmaze/Mail/mail/lists/reuse/15551
Wrote /afs/sipb.mit.edu/user/dmaze/Mail/mail/lists/gnus/ding/6329
Wrote /afs/sipb.mit.edu/user/dmaze/Mail/mail/misc/impersonal/8355
Wrote /afs/sipb.mit.edu/user/dmaze/Mail/mail/lists/handhelds/familiar/937
Wrote /afs/sipb.mit.edu/user/dmaze/Mail/mail/lists/debian/user/177193
nnml: Reading incoming mail (8 new)...done
Reading active file via nnml...
Reading active file via nnml...done
Reading active file via nndsc...
nndsc: Reading 53 groups...
nndsc: Reading groups... 53 left (waiting for info-afs)
nndsc: Reading groups... 52 left (waiting for openafs-announce)
(...)
nndsc: Reading groups... 2 left (waiting for ca)
nndsc: Reading groups... 1 left (waiting for vi)
nndsc: Reading groups...done
Checking new news...
Updating marks for mail.cag.admin...
Updating marks for mail.cag.admin...done
Updating marks for mail.classes.17...
Updating marks for mail.classes.17...done
Updating marks for mail.classes.18...
Updating marks for mail.classes.18...done
Updating marks for mail.classes.6.035.cvs-log...
Updating marks for mail.classes.6.035.cvs-log...done
(...)
Updating marks for mail.cag.projects.streamit...
Updating marks for mail.cag.projects.streamit...done
Updating marks for mail.cag.misc...
Updating marks for mail.cag.misc...done
Checking new news...done

(There are also quite a few garbage collects while doing the "updating
marks" bit, but these don't seem to show up in the XEmacs log.)

SJ> Could you also do a `stat ~/Mail/somennmlgroup/.marks' to see if
SJ> perhaps there is something weird with the modtime field?

{5} Mail% stat mail/cag/misc/.marks
  File: "mail/cag/misc/.marks"
  Size: 84              Blocks: 2          IO Block: 4096   Regular File
Device: ah/10d  Inode: 704955028   Links: 1    
Access: (0600/-rw-------)  Uid: ( 2367/   dmaze)   Gid: (  101/     gdm)
Access: Tue Oct 16 19:01:23 2001
Modify: Tue Oct 16 19:01:23 2001
Change: Tue Oct 16 19:01:23 2001

(That's a little weird; I'd expect at least one of those times to be
Wed Oct 17 16:50:00 2001 or thereabouts.)

SJ> (I guess some network filesystems could skip that field.  What fs
SJ> are you using?)

Transarc AFS, with both the client and servers being on Suns running
Solaris, I believe.

-- 
David Maze             dmaze@mit.edu          http://www.mit.edu/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting.  Politicking should be illegal."
	-- Abra Mitchell