Re: Gnus and multiple Email servers

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor
<help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> writes:

> Eric Abrahamsen wrote:
>
>>> I have
>>>
>>>   (setq gnus-message-archive-group "nnml:mail.sent")
>>>
>>> but also a nnfolder "archive" server that is empty.
>>>
>>> Maybe unrelated on both accounts ... eh
>>
>> Not entirely unrelated, in that your archive-group setting
>> is sufficient to cause Gnus to create a default nnml select
>> method for you. That could potentially contribute to the
>> confusion, if people are trying to understand where all
>> their select methods come from, and don't know why they have
>> an nnml method that they never configured.
>
> Hm ... "method" here meaning ... ?

Yet another contributor to confusion is the proliferation of
terminology. I believe "select method" and "backend" mean the same
thing: a type of server. Then "server" is an instance of one of those
backends. I'd rather drop "select method" altogether, but obviously it
shows up in all these variable/function names...

> I have
>
>   (setq gnus-select-method             '(nntp "news.gmane.io"))
>   (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nntp "nntp.aioe.org")
>                                         (nnml "") ))
>   (setq gnus-message-archive-group      "nnml:mail.sent")
>
> and servers
>
>      nnfolder: archive       (opened)
>       nndraft:               (opened)
>          nnml:               (opened)
>          nntp: nntp.aioe.org (opened)
>          nntp: news.gmane.io (opened)
>
> So nnml I configured explicitely (as well as implicitly if
> I understand you correctly) and the nntp as well, twice.

Right. You configure some servers with those options, then the *Server*
buffer shows you the sum total of the servers you configured, plus the
servers it constructed for various reasons: always-present servers,
servers created because of other customization options, and servers
constructed from existing groups.

> In nndraft it turns up I had 0 drafts and 19 posts in
> "queue", I don't know if that means they were never sent or
> what else it indicates?

Hit "J S" and see what happens :)

(Actually, don't do that, if they've been in there for years that could
mess up your life, or at least confuse a lot of people.)

> In the nnfolder "archive" there is nothing and it isn't even
> opened by default, so I guess it doesn't do anything?
> But I can open it so it is operational, maybe operational
> doing nothing but still ...

By bare default, Gnus will put your sent messages in an nnfolder
"archive" server. Probably when you first started using Gnus you hadn't
configured your archive server, so Gnus created this default. Then later
you set things up more thoroughly, so it never got used? Something like
that? Anyway, you're probably safe to remove it.