Re: 2 questions about EXPIRE setting in gnus

[David Z Maze]

winsphinX <xxx@yyy.zzz> writes:

> thanks, bacause i couldnot distinguish exactly total-expire and
> aoto-expire, i set both. After reading your explains, i think
> total-exp can free more disk space, isn't it?

No.  Three options:

1. No expiry.  Only articles explicitly marked with 'E' from the
   summary buffer are expired.  Reading articles marks them 'R'ead.

2. Auto-expiry.  Only articles marked expirable are expired, but
   reading articles marks them 'E'xpirable.

3. Total-expiry.  Articles merely marked 'R'ead are expired, along
   with articles explicitly marked 'E'xpirable.

Assuming you read every article, auto- and total-expiry will
eventually expire them all at the same times.  It's just a question as
to whether you'd prefer to mark articles as expirable or read when you
read them.  I tend to use total-expiry for everything; it has
predictable behavior if I'm switching it on and off for a group, and I
understand better how it works with scoring.

> yes, i know newsgroups posts are on the servers, but after i
> retrieving/reading a post, i think it should be on my disk. days by
> days, even the posts are very few bytes, they will still consume disk
> space, so what i need is to free local disk space -- maybe by another
> way instead of expiry.

Where are the articles?  If we know what's saving them and where, it
might be possible to explain how and how to clean them up.

  --dzm