Gnus expunge -- force?

Gnus expunge -- force?

[David Masterson]

Is there a way I can force an expunge of an nnimap newsgroup?  If so, is
there a trail I can follow to ensure that the expunge happened locally,
was transmitted to the IMAP server, and was acted upon by the IMAP
server? I'm not quite understanding the Gnus docs where expunge is
concerned. I'm testing a setup where I receive email from GNU mailing
lists via IMAP on zohomail.com and send email via SNMP via icloud.com.

-- 
David Masterson

Re: Gnus expunge -- force?

[Joel Reicher]

David Masterson <dsmasterson@icloud.com> writes:

> Is there a way I can force an expunge of an nnimap newsgroup? 
> If so, is there a trail I can follow to ensure that the expunge 
> happened locally, was transmitted to the IMAP server, and was 
> acted upon by the IMAP server? I'm not quite understanding the 
> Gnus docs where expunge is concerned. I'm testing a setup where 
> I receive email from GNU mailing lists via IMAP on zohomail.com 
> and send email via SNMP via icloud.com.

Why do you want to do an expunge at all?

The reason I ask is that by "expunge" I *think* (but am not sure) 
you are referring to an IMAP operation that has nothing to do with 
Gnus at all (beyond the need for Gnus' IMAP code needing to handle 
the operation correctly).

But it's possible you are not referring to this, and perhaps the 
easiest way to figure it out is to know why you want to do "it".

Regards,

        - Joel

Re: Gnus expunge -- force?

[David Masterson]

Joel Reicher <joel.reicher@gmail.com> writes:

> David Masterson <dsmasterson@icloud.com> writes:
>
>> Is there a way I can force an expunge of an nnimap newsgroup? If so,
>> is there a trail I can follow to ensure that the expunge happened
>> locally, was transmitted to the IMAP server, and was acted upon by
>> the IMAP server? I'm not quite understanding the Gnus docs where
>> expunge is concerned. I'm testing a setup where I receive email from
>> GNU mailing lists via IMAP on zohomail.com and send email via SNMP
>> via icloud.com.
>
> Why do you want to do an expunge at all?

By expunge, I mean cleanup old emails.  Talking about this properly is a
little difficult because Gnus has separate definitions for read,
deleted, expired and completely removed.

My issue is that I've subscribed to GNU mailing lists with my new
zohomail.com account.  While generous for a free account, not cleaning
up the old emails will quickly run it out of space.  Zohomail is new to
me and, when I expire ('E') email in Gnus, I see the email in the Zoho
mailer tagged with 'gnus-expire'.  I assume that's how Gnus tracks
expired mail that will be cleaned up at "some later time".  I wanted to
force that cleanup in a controlled way to ensure that the interface
between zohomail and Gnus is working to cleanup old emails.

-- 
David Masterson

Re: Gnus expunge -- force?

[Joel Reicher]

David Masterson <dsmasterson@icloud.com> writes:

> Joel Reicher <joel.reicher@gmail.com> writes:
>

[...]

>> Why do you want to do an expunge at all?
>
> By expunge, I mean cleanup old emails.  Talking about this 
> properly is a little difficult because Gnus has separate 
> definitions for read, deleted, expired and completely removed.

Read and expired are different kinds of Gnus marks. They do 
nothing to the "existence" of the email.

Deleted is also a kind of mark, but it's defined in the IMAP spec 
and so both other IMAP clients and the IMAP server might do 
something with it.

Two possibilities are hide the message (some clients won't let you 
see it at all) and expunge it (which I personally think of as a GC 
step that frees the storage for a message that to all intents and 
purposes no longer exists).

I don't know if my understanding of expunge is the way 
many/most/all clients and servers implement it. It's possible they 
aren't consistent with each other.

To begin with you have to get to the "deleted" status. You can use 
the Gnus expiry mechanism if you want, but it's up to you. Doing B 
DEL will get you there immediately, so if you're still in the 
process of getting things working you might like to cleanup with a 
bunch of process marks using `#' and then do B DEL. Then you can 
be confident the messages have been marked as deleted (but not 
necessarily expunged from the server storage).

> My issue is that I've subscribed to GNU mailing lists with my 
> new zohomail.com account.  While generous for a free account, 
> not cleaning up the old emails will quickly run it out of space. 
> Zohomail is new to me and, when I expire ('E') email in Gnus, I 
> see the email in the Zoho mailer tagged with 'gnus-expire'.  I 
> assume that's how Gnus tracks expired mail that will be cleaned 
> up at "some later time".  I wanted to force that cleanup in a 
> controlled way to ensure that the interface between zohomail and 
> Gnus is working to cleanup old emails. 

Expiry is what Gnus offers for *you* to tailor a deletion scheme 
you like. For example it can be used to not delete the email at 
all, but instead to move it to a trash folder.

If diskspace is your concern you need to get from deleted to 
expunged. zohomail might have something to say about this, but you 
probably need to check the nnimap-expunge section of (info "(gnus) 
Customizing the IMAP Connection"). If zohomail is "OK" with it and 
you really do want to free up diskspace ASAP, maybe set it to 
immediate.

HTH.

Regards,

        - Joel