Stop Gnus from downloading whole newsgroup each time

[Rich Daley]

Hello all,

Recently my ISP upgraded its news server to one that requires
authentication. I figured out how to use ~/.authinfo and so forth, but
something else seems odd now.

Every time I select a group with 1 or more unread messages, Gnus
downloads the whole group (sometimes 6 or 7 megs) even if I ask it for
one message.

I guess this is probably because my client is talking to a new type of
server and doesn't know how to ask it for specific messages.

Does anyone know if there's something I can put in my ~/.gnus that will
help this? I would rather not go back to using the Agent (I'm not sure
it would even help here) if I can help it, as I have an always-on
internet connection.

Some info on my system:

  OS:    Debian GNU/Linux sid/unstable
  Emacs: XEmacs 21.4p6 from Debian sid
  Gnus:  v5.10.6 from packages.xemacs.org

I can replicate this behaviour with the following minimal .gnus file:

----
(setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.nildram.co.uk"))
(add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
             '(nnml ""
                    (nnml-directory "~/Mail/")
                    (nnml-active-file "~/Mail/active")
                    ))
----

as well as my normal .gnus.

Any help would be very much appreciated!

Thanks,

~ Rich

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