2 questions about EXPIRE setting in gnus

2 questions about EXPIRE setting in gnus

[winsphinX]

i set 'total expired' in gnus mail, and the mails are
disappeared after 7 days, I saw only about ten mails in
group buffer, obviously many mails were expiresd,but in
mini-buffer, it was still shown 'default 400', why? and the
disappeared mails are deleted or are only invisible?

and the second question is, when i set the same setting in
gnus newsgroup, is doesn't work. i need such a result -- the
news before 7 days will be automatic deleted to free my disk
space.

Re: 2 questions about EXPIRE setting in gnus

[David Z Maze]

winsphinX <xxx@yyy.zzz> writes:

> i set 'total expired' in gnus mail, and the mails are
> disappeared after 7 days, I saw only about ten mails in
> group buffer, obviously many mails were expiresd,but in
> mini-buffer, it was still shown 'default 400', why? and the
> disappeared mails are deleted or are only invisible?

You're seeing two different effects.  First, Gnus by default will only
show unread articles in a group (pressing C-u RET from the group
buffer, or normal RET on a group with no unread or ticked articles,
will show them all).  Total expiry will delete (as in, removed from
the disk, gone forever) read mails that meet its criteria.

Your other options are auto-expiry (reading an article marks it
expirable rather than read, but no non-expirable article is ever
expired) and manual expiry ('E' on an article marks it expirable and
it will eventually get deleted).

> and the second question is, when i set the same setting in
> gnus newsgroup, is doesn't work. i need such a result -- the
> news before 7 days will be automatic deleted to free my disk
> space.

The newsgroup articles live on the news server, not on your local
machine.  So you can't usefully set any expiry option there (you can't
cause the server to delete its articles) but the newsgroup also
shouldn't be taking up any space locally.

  --dzm

Re: 2 questions about EXPIRE setting in gnus

[winsphinX]

David Z Maze <dmaze@mit.edu> writes:

> winsphinX <xxx@yyy.zzz> writes:
>
>> i set 'total expired' in gnus mail, and the mails are
>> disappeared after 7 days, I saw only about ten mails in
>> group buffer, obviously many mails were expiresd,but in
>> mini-buffer, it was still shown 'default 400', why? and the
>> disappeared mails are deleted or are only invisible?
>
> You're seeing two different effects.  First, Gnus by default will only
> show unread articles in a group (pressing C-u RET from the group
> buffer, or normal RET on a group with no unread or ticked articles,
> will show them all).  Total expiry will delete (as in, removed from
> the disk, gone forever) read mails that meet its criteria.
>
> Your other options are auto-expiry (reading an article marks it
> expirable rather than read, but no non-expirable article is ever
> expired) and manual expiry ('E' on an article marks it expirable and
> it will eventually get deleted).
>

thanks, bacause i couldnot distinguish exactly total-expire and
aoto-expire, i set both. After reading your explains, i think
total-exp can free more disk space, isn't it?

>> and the second question is, when i set the same setting in
>> gnus newsgroup, is doesn't work. i need such a result -- the
>> news before 7 days will be automatic deleted to free my disk
>> space.
>
> The newsgroup articles live on the news server, not on your local
> machine.  So you can't usefully set any expiry option there (you can't
> cause the server to delete its articles) but the newsgroup also
> shouldn't be taking up any space locally.
>

yes, i know newsgroups posts are on the servers, but after i
retrieving/reading a post, i think it should be on my disk. days by
days, even the posts are very few bytes, they will still consume disk
space, so what i need is to free local disk space -- maybe by another
way instead of expiry.

Re: 2 questions about EXPIRE setting in gnus

[David Z Maze]

winsphinX <xxx@yyy.zzz> writes:

> thanks, bacause i couldnot distinguish exactly total-expire and
> aoto-expire, i set both. After reading your explains, i think
> total-exp can free more disk space, isn't it?

No.  Three options:

1. No expiry.  Only articles explicitly marked with 'E' from the
   summary buffer are expired.  Reading articles marks them 'R'ead.

2. Auto-expiry.  Only articles marked expirable are expired, but
   reading articles marks them 'E'xpirable.

3. Total-expiry.  Articles merely marked 'R'ead are expired, along
   with articles explicitly marked 'E'xpirable.

Assuming you read every article, auto- and total-expiry will
eventually expire them all at the same times.  It's just a question as
to whether you'd prefer to mark articles as expirable or read when you
read them.  I tend to use total-expiry for everything; it has
predictable behavior if I'm switching it on and off for a group, and I
understand better how it works with scoring.

> yes, i know newsgroups posts are on the servers, but after i
> retrieving/reading a post, i think it should be on my disk. days by
> days, even the posts are very few bytes, they will still consume disk
> space, so what i need is to free local disk space -- maybe by another
> way instead of expiry.

Where are the articles?  If we know what's saving them and where, it
might be possible to explain how and how to clean them up.

  --dzm

Re: 2 questions about EXPIRE setting in gnus

[winsphinX]

David Z Maze <dmaze@mit.edu> writes:


>
> Where are the articles?  If we know what's saving them and where, it
> might be possible to explain how and how to clean them up.
>

Thanks for your replay. 

i think the newsgroup articles are stored at
'~/News/agent/nntp/*', and i use the command 'du -hs', it
says 44M.