Solution for gnus wide sync

Solution for gnus wide sync

[Paulo J. Matos]

Hi,

I am currently using GNUS widely at home, on the laptop and at
work. However, annoyingly I don't have any sync setup between gnus
besides the config file through git and dropbox.

What I would like is to sync 
- the topic setup
- subscribed newsgroups
- newsgroup message status (read, expired, etc)

Any tips on how to do this or workarounds to this?

Cheers,
-- 
PMatos

Re: Solution for gnus wide sync

[Matt Lundin]

pocmatos@gmail.com (Paulo J. Matos) writes:

> I am currently using GNUS widely at home, on the laptop and at
> work. However, annoyingly I don't have any sync setup between gnus
> besides the config file through git and dropbox.
>
> What I would like is to sync 
> - the topic setup
> - subscribed newsgroups
> - newsgroup message status (read, expired, etc)
>
> Any tips on how to do this or workarounds to this?

I place everything of importance in a single ~/gnus/ directory and then
sync it across multiple machines using git.

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
  (setq 
   gnus-startup-file "~/gnus/.newsrc"
   gnus-directory "~/gnus/"
   gnus-registry-cache-file "~/gnus/.gnus.registry.eld"
   gnus-dribble-directory "~/gnus/"
   mail-source-directory "~/gnus/incoming/"
   gnus-cache-directory "~/gnus/cache/"
   )
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

One could use rsync or unision or one of many version control systems to
sync the data.

Note: my setup is a bit more complicated than this because I use local
mail backends (nnml, nnfolder) along with a local dovecot server
(nnimap), but the above should suffice for news. 

Hope this helps,
Matt

Re: Solution for gnus wide sync

[Paulo J. Matos]

Matt Lundin <mdl@imapmail.org> writes:

> pocmatos@gmail.com (Paulo J. Matos) writes:
>
>> I am currently using GNUS widely at home, on the laptop and at
>> work. However, annoyingly I don't have any sync setup between gnus
>> besides the config file through git and dropbox.
>>
>> What I would like is to sync 
>> - the topic setup
>> - subscribed newsgroups
>> - newsgroup message status (read, expired, etc)
>>
>> Any tips on how to do this or workarounds to this?
>
> I place everything of importance in a single ~/gnus/ directory and then
> sync it across multiple machines using git.
>
>   (setq 
>    gnus-startup-file "~/gnus/.newsrc"
>    gnus-directory "~/gnus/"
>    gnus-registry-cache-file "~/gnus/.gnus.registry.eld"
>    gnus-dribble-directory "~/gnus/"
>    mail-source-directory "~/gnus/incoming/"
>    gnus-cache-directory "~/gnus/cache/"
>    )
>

I would love to know more about your setup and interaction with git.
Have you written about it anywhere?

If not, could you please just let me know about:
- Do you have any script to push the changes into a server when you
logout?
- Any elisp to pull the changes from the server during startup?
- Do you have a git project called gnus that you use? I assume you also
use git to keep track of .emacs for example. Do you then have a
different git project just for the .emacs?

Cheers,

-- 
PMatos

Re: Solution for gnus wide sync

[Jason Earl]

On Thu, Sep 02 2010, Paulo J. Matos Paulo J. Matos wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am currently using GNUS widely at home, on the laptop and at
> work. However, annoyingly I don't have any sync setup between gnus
> besides the config file through git and dropbox.
>
> What I would like is to sync 
> - the topic setup
> - subscribed newsgroups
> - newsgroup message status (read, expired, etc)
>
> Any tips on how to do this or workarounds to this?
>
> Cheers,

I've got the gnus-home-directory and the gnus-directory customized to

"~/.emacs.d/gnus/"
"~/.emacs.d/gnus/News/"

And then I have ~/.emacs.d/gnus/ stored in a Bazaar repository which I
check out as a bound branch on the individual machines.  Dropbox would
probably be far easier (and mostly automatic).  My experience that if
you keep the files in these directories in sync then things simply work
as you would expect.

Jason

Re: Solution for gnus wide sync

[Rafael]

Jason Earl <jearl@notengoamigos.org> writes:

> On Thu, Sep 02 2010, Paulo J. Matos Paulo J. Matos wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am currently using GNUS widely at home, on the laptop and at
>> work. However, annoyingly I don't have any sync setup between gnus
>> besides the config file through git and dropbox.
>>
>> What I would like is to sync 
>> - the topic setup
>> - subscribed newsgroups
>> - newsgroup message status (read, expired, etc)
>>
>> Any tips on how to do this or workarounds to this?
>>
>> Cheers,
>
> Dropbox would probably be far easier (and mostly automatic).  My
> experience that if you keep the files in these directories in sync
> then things simply work as you would expect.

Since Monday I have been using the following (in .emacs).

  (setq gnus-home-directory "~/Dropbox/gnus")
  (setq gnus-directory "~/Dropbox/gnus/News")
  (setq message-directory "~/Dropbox/gnus/Mail")

and so far everything seems to work. According to the documentation,
only the first should suffice, but not for me.

Re: Solution for gnus wide sync

[Andi Albrecht]

Rafael <rvf0068@gmail.com> writes:

> Jason Earl <jearl@notengoamigos.org> writes:
>
>> On Thu, Sep 02 2010, Paulo J. Matos Paulo J. Matos wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I am currently using GNUS widely at home, on the laptop and at
>>> work. However, annoyingly I don't have any sync setup between gnus
>>> besides the config file through git and dropbox.
>>>
>>> What I would like is to sync 
>>> - the topic setup
>>> - subscribed newsgroups
>>> - newsgroup message status (read, expired, etc)
>>>
>>> Any tips on how to do this or workarounds to this?
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>
>> Dropbox would probably be far easier (and mostly automatic).  My
>> experience that if you keep the files in these directories in sync
>> then things simply work as you would expect.
>
> Since Monday I have been using the following (in .emacs).
>
>   (setq gnus-home-directory "~/Dropbox/gnus")
>   (setq gnus-directory "~/Dropbox/gnus/News")
>   (setq message-directory "~/Dropbox/gnus/Mail")
>
> and so far everything seems to work. According to the documentation,
> only the first should suffice, but not for me.

I'm using Dropbox too for a while now and it works pretty well. The only
thing I've never tried is to be logged in on both machines at the same
time with a running Gnus on both. Dropbox has no automatic merging, so
maybe this could cause some problems.

Different from Rafaels setup I've symlink'ed ~/.newsrs, ~/.newsrc.eld
and ~/News to corresponding files in my ~/Dropbox directory.

Andi

Re: Solution for gnus wide sync

[Brett Viren]

Andi Albrecht <albrecht.andi <at> gmail.com> writes:

> I'm using Dropbox too for a while now and it works pretty well. The only
> thing I've never tried is to be logged in on both machines at the same
> time with a running Gnus on both. Dropbox has no automatic merging, so
> maybe this could cause some problems.

I played with using Dropbox but now I'm trying with git.  Here is what I do.

I have a "gnus.git" bare repository that I clone onto ~/gnus on workstation and 
laptop.  All emacs setup is same on both.

In .emacs:

(setq 
 gnus-startup-file "~/gnus/.newsrc"
 gnus-directory "~/gnus/"
 gnus-dribble-directory "~/gnus/"
 mail-source-directory "~/gnus/incoming/"
 gnus-cache-directory "~/gnus/cache/"
)

(add-hook 'gnus-after-exiting-gnus-hook
          (lambda ()
            (shell-command "gnus-sync push")))

At the very top of .gnus:

(shell-command "gnus-sync pull")

The "gnus-sync" script simply collects some git commands.  A push does:

    cd $HOME/gnus
    git add overview drafts .newsrc.eld
    git commit -a -m "State of gnus as of $(date)"
    git push

A "pull" does:

    cd $HOME/gnus
    git pull

Like with the dropbox approach it is possible to get conflicts when the 
pull/push cycle of one system overlaps with another.

The mail itself is synced from workstation to laptop using offlineimap in IMAP-
to-IMAP with dovecot serving both ends.

This seems to all work fairly well but some problems remain:

 * I have years of monthly outboxes on the workstation that are not synced to 
the laptop.  Each time the workstation runs gnus these get added as new groups 
and they can't be opened on the laptop.  I guess I can fix this by doing a 
monthly sync of some kind.

 * I still have the problem (posted previously) that most groups no longer load 
just new, unread articles but try to load all articles as if C-u ENTER was done 
on the group (instead of just ENTER).

-Brett.

Re: Solution for gnus wide sync

[regcl]

Hi Brett,

I think I want to use git to sync multiple machines and multiple
accounts (personal and work) in gnus.  So here is the question...

Are you still using the scheme you outlined earlier? 

Any developments in the approach?

Thanks,
regcl