Re: How to set up gnus email.

[stromme@mi.uib.no (Stein A. Stromme)]

[Don Saklad]

| How do you make sure that old mail is not deleted automatically or
| unintentionally?... a definitive statement on what to do to prevent
| automatic `expiration' of old files.

I don't do anything special, and gnus does not delete my mail.  I'm
able to delete mail myself using the 'B DEL y' key sequence.  This
takes a numeric argument to allow me to delete lots of messages at
once.  It can also delete # marked messages, if you prefer.  The
confusion about mail expiration and deletion comes perhaps from the
fact that it is possible to auto-expire mail if you really really want
to. 

> From the gnus info file:

Expiring Mail
-------------

       Traditional mail readers have a tendency to remove mail
    articles when you mark them as read, in some way.  Gnus takes a
    fundamentally different approach to mail reading.

       Gnus basically considers mail just to be news that has been
    received in a rather peculiar manner.  It does not think that it
    has the power to actually change the mail, or delete any mail
    messages.  If you enter a mail group, and mark articles as "read",
    or kill them in some other fashion, the mail articles will still
    exist on the system.  I repeat: Gnus will not delete your old,
    read mail.  Unless you ask it to, of course.

       To make Gnus get rid of your unwanted mail, you have to mark
    the articles as "expirable".  This does not mean that the articles
    will disappear right away, however.  In general, a mail article
    will be deleted from your system if, 1) it is marked as expirable,
    AND 2) it is more than one week old.  If you do not mark an
    article as expirable, it will remain on your system until hell
    freezes over.  This bears repeating one more time, with some
    spurious capitalizations: IF you do NOT mark articles as
    EXPIRABLE, Gnus will NEVER delete those ARTICLES.

SA
-- 
Stein Arild Strømme            +47 55584825, +47 95801887
Universitetet i Bergen                  Fax: +47 55589672     
Matematisk institutt               www.mi.uib.no/~stromme         
Johs Brunsg 12, N-5008 BERGEN           stromme@mi.uib.no