using agent to accumlate post in agentized groups

using agent to accumlate post in agentized groups

[hput via Announcements and discussions for GNUS, the GNU Emacs Usenet newsreader (in English)]

I once had some working knowledge of using gnus agent.  But it leaked
away over the last 20 and more yrs. As it became faster and faster to
get news.

I want to acquire several thousand messages from certain groups.

Ones that likely carry info I most want to access.  So back then I used to
download Thousands of old messages overtime so as not to bog down any
servers.

I lost all my old thousands of messages over many host changes, moves
and fool blunders.

My aim then and now is to subject the messages to my own regular
expression searches for bits of code and the like.  Not so easily done
on google with its inability to be made to look for much detail, as of
course is required due to the massive, massive amount of stuff it
searches. 

Whereas say some 200,000 posts can be regex searched and although slow,
the sky is the limit on detailed searches. regular expressions are
endlessly customizable to dig what you want.

-------       -------       ---=---       -------       ------- 

So Can any one provide a step thru to getting started accumulating
messages with the agent?

I used a `true' predicate back when I was working on it, but don't
recall much other detail.

And of course a lot of the needed information is in larsi (and many
others) efforts in the gnus manual.  But combining into a working
setup is another animal.  So hoping someone who uses the agent
regularly will be willing to coach me a little

Re: using agent to accumlate post in agentized groups

[Eric Abrahamsen]

hput via "Announcements and discussions for GNUS, the GNU Emacs Usenet
newsreader (in English)" <info-gnus-english@gnu.org> writes:

> I once had some working knowledge of using gnus agent.  But it leaked
> away over the last 20 and more yrs. As it became faster and faster to
> get news.
>
> I want to acquire several thousand messages from certain groups.
>
> Ones that likely carry info I most want to access.  So back then I used to
> download Thousands of old messages overtime so as not to bog down any
> servers.
>
> I lost all my old thousands of messages over many host changes, moves
> and fool blunders.

Have you considered setting up your own local nntp server, a Leafnode
instance or something? Listening to what you're describing, I think that
might end up being a more feasible approach, and might give you several
other side benefits.

Re: using agent to accumlate post in agentized groups

[James Thomas]

hput via "Announcements and discussions for GNUS, the GNU Emacs Usenet newsreader (in English)" wrote:

> So Can any one provide a step thru to getting started accumulating
> messages with the agent?
>
> I used a `true' predicate back when I was working on it, but don't
> recall much other detail.

If you still want to use the agent (after considering Eric's
suggestion), it should be to finely control the kind of messages you
want downloaded. The 'Agent Basics' section of the manual covers most of
what you need.

Simply agentize the server (J a) and any messages you read will
automatically be saved (unless gnus-agent-eagerly-store-articles is
changed) I also have gnus-agent-enable-expiration set to 'DISABLE to
keep all articles permanently - if you want to expire agent articles
selectively, don't do that, and mark the ones you want to keep (see
'Agent Expiry')

A 'download policy' is only needed if you want to download articles
blindly based on some rule. To read them offline, unplug Gnus (J j) -
you can include the download mark in gnus-summary-line-format to know
whether the article you are about to read is availabe offline.


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