Re: agent strangeness

[Conrad Sauerwald <conrad@area.com>]

prequel: I was having a problem with pgnus0.95/nnimap0.128 (NTEmacs
20.4) using the agent, that whenever I refreshed "g" the group buffer
unplugged, it would reset article counts to an old state instead of
the values I saw when working plugged.  I found that there was a
"groups" file in ~/News/agent/<<mailserver>>/agent.lib next to an
"active" file, which was the only candidate where gnus was getting
these old article counts from.  After renaming the groups file out of
the way, everything was fine.  So, I'm cross-posting this to ding to
find out whether I'm getting around the problem this the wrong way, or
the wrong way.. and hopefully find out the right way.

Simon Josefsson <jas@pdc.kth.se> writes:

> > I just experienced some strangeness while using the agent and am not
> > quite sure whether this is a known problem.  
> > 
> > I went online and basically got my email like I'm used to (J j J Y g J
> > s J j) and was able to read everything.  I replied to a message and
> > after firing it off wanted to check it, so I refreshed (g) to see
> > queue updated.  However, this also made all the email I had retrieved
> > while online disappear.
> 
> This looks similar to another bug reported to the ding-list recently
> 
> http://www.gnus.org/list-archives/ding/199908/msg00059.html

Indeed, but I only noticed it now I tried to reproduce the bug: once I
make groups available again in nnimap/<<mailserver>>/agent.lib I get
the wrong (old) counts after I press 'g' unplugged and after that lose
all the marks set in groups for articles which the "groups" file
didn't know existed.  (I'm guessing the marks are still there on the
server, checking)  Yes, the marks are still on the server, but got
misinterpreted/messed up while reading unplugged.  They are correctly
interpreted while plugged.

> No, it should work. Anyway I think it's a Agent problem and not a
> nnimap problem.

It seems an agent problem, because it seems to get more than a listing
of the groups from the "groups" file: initialising the active list and
using that one instead of the values in the "active" file.

> I wasn't able to reproduce it. Are you able to reproduce it all the
> time, or does it only happen "sometimes"? If you remove all your old
> 'groups' file and let Gnus generate new 'active' files, does it go
> away?

Yes, I can reproduce it (see above).  And yes, it goes away after I
move "groups" out of the way.  In fact the "groups" file is never
touched or regenerated if existing.  Only "active" gets updated.

Conrad.