Re: synchronizing gnus sessions on multiple computers

[Eric Abrahamsen]

"Roland Winkler" <winkler@gnu.org> writes:

> On Fri, Sep 10 2021, Eric Abrahamsen wrote:
>> Yes, the .newsrc.eld file only gets written when you save Gnus ("s" in
>> the *Group* buffer), and I would absolutely not try to update files for
>> a Gnus that's still running, it will not handle that gracefully. It
>> should, however, be enough to shut Gnus down first (you can see the
>> `gnus-clear-system' function to see what happens then), rsync, then
>> restart Gnus.
>
> Thanks, it took me a while to get back to this.  It seems that
> `gnus-clear-system' / quitting gnus is missing
> `gnus-save-newsrc-file-last-timestamp'.  Quitting gnus, then rsync'ing
> gnus followed by a restart of gnus will use .newsrc.eld file from the
> other machine.  But when this .newsrc.eld file is saved again, the
> timestamp of the file on disk is compared against the old timestamp of
> the old file that's already gone.
>
> I submitted a bug report (bug#51052).

And it looks like it's already fixed! Thanks a lot for doing that --
there's so much uncertainty and magical thinking around Gnus' behavior,
it's good to get one step closer to reliability.