cyrus imapd 2.2.12, emacs 21.4, gnus 5.10.6 'new mail' refreshing

[darrell]

i have a problem with the above setup. what i WANT is an easy way to
check for new mail...

M-g will rescan the inbox, but that's slow for a big inbox, and also
asks how many messages to show -- i just want new ones added to the
list as they come in

I thought g should update the message list, but it doesn't seem to.

I've also tried

(require 'gnus-demon)
(setq gnus-use-demon t)
(gnus-demon-add-handler 'gnus-group-get-new-news 5 2)
(gnus-demon-init)

to automate the process, but it seems that gnus-group-get-new-news just
simply doesn't want to ;-)

any thoughts?

- darrell