nnir searching in huge imap folders

nnir searching in huge imap folders

[Steinar Bang]

To keep the performance of my main two IMAP inboxes, I total-expire read
articles in them, into archive inboxes (I `B DEL' everything I don't
want to keep). I also `B m' my ticked articles manually, after the
expired articles when there get to be too many of them.

The problem with these archive folders, is that they have gotten too big
for Gnus to handle.

So the problem is then to access them.

Heh... when I really, really, need some stuff that's in there, I ssh in
to the IMAP server, and grep through the articles (the folders are
stored as maildir and served by a dovecot IMAP server).

But that's clumsy.

I've read about nnir, and have planned to look into it, for quite a few
years now... and I guess the time has finally come to actually do so.

The behaviour I'm looking for, is to be able to enter my main inbox
group, and to fire off a search from there, that will search that
particular IMAP folder, as well as its archive folder, and bring back
the results inside the group.

Is this possible?

Or is it, as is indicated in the comments in the nnir.el header, only
possible to do searches from the Group buffer?

The reason I want to do the search from inside an IMAP group, is that I
want to limit the search expression by what's known by that context
(ie. search that particular IMAP server, and search only the two IMAP
folders of the group itself, and the group's archive folder).

If it isn't possible to initiate the search from inside a group, is it
possible to persist the above parts of the search, somehow?

Thanx!


- Steinar

Re: nnir searching in huge imap folders

[Tassilo Horn]

Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:

Hi Steinar,

> Heh... when I really, really, need some stuff that's in there, I ssh
> in to the IMAP server, and grep through the articles (the folders are
> stored as maildir and served by a dovecot IMAP server).
>
> But that's clumsy.

Indeed. ;-)

> I've read about nnir, and have planned to look into it, for quite a
> few years now... and I guess the time has finally come to actually do
> so.
>
> The behaviour I'm looking for, is to be able to enter my main inbox
> group, and to fire off a search from there, that will search that
> particular IMAP folder, as well as its archive folder, and bring back
> the results inside the group.
>
> Is this possible?

The normal "workflow" would be to mark both the INBOX and its archive
group in the *Group* buffer, then hit `G G' and enter your search terms.
This will open an ephemeral nnir summary buffer with all matching
articles from the marked groups.

> Or is it, as is indicated in the comments in the nnir.el header, only
> possible to do searches from the Group buffer?

Yes, at least I think so.

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: nnir searching in huge imap folders

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>:

> The normal "workflow" would be to mark both the INBOX and its archive
> group in the *Group* buffer, then hit `G G' and enter your search
> terms.  This will open an ephemeral nnir summary buffer with all
> matching articles from the marked groups.

The problem with that is that I'll rather not subscribe the archive
folder as an nnimap group (both `B m' and expiry-target, works without
subscribing the archive folder as an nnimap group).

And if I have to subscribe the archive group, I would like to hide it
deep in a topic somewhere.

In both cases the group won't be easily accessible to select together
with the INBOX.

Hm... if I could set the archive group as a group parameter, or
something.  And then do `C-u G G' over the INBOX group in the Group
buffer, and have it search both the INBOX and the archive group from
that, then it would actually fill my requirements.

(Also, and this is a different thing, it would have been nice if article
number searches could go from the INBOX and into the archive folder as
well.)

Re: nnir searching in huge imap folders

[Bjørn Mork]

Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:
>>>>>> Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>:
>
>> The normal "workflow" would be to mark both the INBOX and its archive
>> group in the *Group* buffer, then hit `G G' and enter your search
>> terms.  This will open an ephemeral nnir summary buffer with all
>> matching articles from the marked groups.
>
> The problem with that is that I'll rather not subscribe the archive
> folder as an nnimap group (both `B m' and expiry-target, works without
> subscribing the archive folder as an nnimap group).

You can select and search any group which is visible after pressing `L'
in the *Group* buffer, including the unsubscribed groups.


Bjørn