From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc) Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel,gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: Gnus maildir backend issues Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2007 17:19:41 -0400 Organization: What did you have in mind? A short, blunt, human pyramid? Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1194124868 3405 80.91.229.12 (3 Nov 2007 21:21:08 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2007 21:21:08 +0000 (UTC) Cc: ding , emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Sascha Wilde Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Nov 03 22:21:11 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1IoQQV-0003Aw-Cx for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 03 Nov 2007 22:21:07 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1IoQQL-0005jZ-2J for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 03 Nov 2007 17:20:57 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1IoQQI-0005jA-Az for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 03 Nov 2007 17:20:54 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1IoQQF-0005iy-Rr for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 03 Nov 2007 17:20:53 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1IoQQF-0005iv-Kn for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 03 Nov 2007 17:20:51 -0400 Original-Received: from mpv4.tis.cwru.edu ([129.22.105.34]) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:RSA_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA1:24) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1IoQQF-0001RP-DT for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 03 Nov 2007 17:20:51 -0400 Original-Received: from mpv5.tis.cwru.edu (mpv5.TIS.CWRU.Edu [129.22.105.51]) by mpv4.tis.cwru.edu (MOS 3.8.5-GA) with ESMTP id CEZ02781 for ; Sat, 3 Nov 2007 17:19:44 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: from multivac.cwru.edu (multivac.ITS.CWRU.Edu [129.22.114.26]) by mpv5.tis.cwru.edu (MOS 3.8.5-GA) with SMTP id CYF31253 for ; Sat, 3 Nov 2007 17:19:44 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: (qmail 17726 invoked by uid 500); 3 Nov 2007 21:20:06 -0000 In-Reply-To: (Sascha Wilde's message of "Sat\, 03 Nov 2007 20\:04\:55 +0100") User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.1 (gnu/linux) Mail-Copies-To: nobody Mail-Followup-To: Sascha Wilde , emacs-devel@gnu.org, ding Original-Lines: 46 X-Junkmail-Status: score=10/49, host=mpv4.tis.cwru.edu X-Junkmail-SD-Raw: score=unknown, refid=str=0001.0A010206.472CE516.008A:SCJSTAT1042116,ss=1,fgs=0, ip=129.22.105.51, so=2007-07-31 18:51:00, dmn=5.4.3/2007-09-06 X-detected-kernel: by monty-python.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:82458 gmane.emacs.gnus.general:65541 Archived-At: Sascha Wilde wrote: > prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc) wrote: >> [.nmaildir/num/ files are] used to keep track of article number >> assignments. If you remove them, you may cause some data >> corruption. > > Hu? I removed the entire .nnmaildir sometimes and had no problems. It depends on what Gnus features you use. Removing those files will make nnmaildir reassign article numbers, which may be different from the article numbers that were assigned the first time. If you use any features that store article numbers outside the backend, such as the cache or agent, then you'll have trouble. Also, deleting just some of the num/* files, and leaving the rest of .nnmaildir intact, will definitely cause trouble, even for just gathering new messages. > Even more, I wouldn't expect to encounter an problems as I would expect > the original maildir to be self contained. Actually for most other MUAs > it is, isn't it? Could be; I'm not familiar with any others enough to say. It's certainly possible to design a MUA from scratch so that all metadata can be regenerated at any time. nnmaildir does that as much as it can (removing the nov/* files is safe), but Gnus requires numeric IDs assigned to articles, and some features require those IDs to never change. So deleting the information of what numbers have been assigned will screw up those features. > First of all I consider it problematic in general, to store meta > data forever. Why would one need any information on mails deleted > years ago? As much of the metadata as possible is deleted along with the article itself. All that is kept is the fact that the article number has already been assigned, so it won't be reused. > excluding all the .nnmaildir directories makes entering the commands > more cumbersome. Not a big issue, but annoying. If I had to do that often, I'd make a small script or some other kind of shortcut. paul