Re: problem: .overview~[0-9]*~ files not being deleted

[wayne]

In <ufyq24edn.fsf@vignette.com> Kevin Greiner <kevin.greiner@vignette.com> 
writes:

> wayne <wayne@schlitt.net> writes:
>
>> I saw some discussions about the backup overview files being created
>> when errors were detected, so I went and deleted *all* the overview
>> files.  The backup files were immediately being created.  So, this
>> isn't a case of a rare corruption of the .overview that sticks around.
>> Whatever it is, the problem happens very quickly.
>
> Now, that's interesting.  There's quite a few agent users in the world
> so this isn't a common issue.  There must be something about the nntp
> headers that your server is providing.  There are messages written as
> the same time as the backup is created.  Something like 'Duplicate
> overview line for ...' or 'Overview buffer not sorted'.  Can you tell
> me which message you are seeing?  You might need to look in the
> *Messages* buffer to find it.


I don't see errors very often, but that may be because the messages go
by too quickly for me to see them.  Checking my *Message-Log*, I see
this:


Retrieving newsgroup: nntp+news-server.neb.rr.com:gnu.emacs.gnus...
Opening nntp server on news-server.neb.rr.com...
Opening nntp server on news-server.neb.rr.com...done
Fetching headers for nntp+news-server.neb.rr.com:gnu.emacs.gnus...
nntp read: 10k
nntp read: 12k
nntp read: 13k
nntp read: 15k
nntp read: 16k
nntp read: 17k
nntp read: 18k
Finding sort keys...
Sorting records...
Reordering buffer...
Reordering buffer... Done
Created backup copy of overview in 
/home/wayne/News/agent/nntp/news-server.neb.rr.com/gnu/emacs/gnus/.overview~1~.
Duplicate overview line for 49692
Duplicate overview line for 49694
[50 more "duplicate" errors deleted]
Fetching headers for nntp+news-server.neb.rr.com:gnu.emacs.gnus...done
Scoring...
Scoring...done
Making sparse threads...
Making sparse threads...done
Generating summary...
Generating summary...done


Now, one thing I may be doing that others aren't, is that I like to
see some context with the messages so I usually add a prefix arg when
I enter a group.  That is, I type "99 space" on the group line.  I've
tried setting some variables to have this done automatically, but none
really seem to work as well.  For example, I have the following in my
init.el file:

(setq gnus-use-cross-reference t)
(setq gnus-auto-select-newsgroup nil)
(setq gnus-summary-check-current t)
(setq gnus-fetch-old-headers 200)
(add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
(add-hook 'message-sent-hook 'gnus-score-followup-thread)
(setq gnus-use-cache 'passive)
(setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
(setq gnus-keep-backlog 200)
(setq gnus-read-active-file nil)
(setq gnus-large-newsgroup 1000)


Mind you, I've been using gnus since 1996 and my init.el file has
accumulated a large amount of cruft over the years.  So, this is just
part of the 764 lines in the init.el file and I don't remember why I
have all that stuff set.  About 4 years ago, I switched to using the
agent stuff so that I could read email when my laptop was off the net
and around the same time I went on a rampage of tweaking variables.


-wayne