Re: gnus explosion (memory exhausted)

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 10:19:39 +0200 Gary <help-gnu-emacs@garydjones.name> wrote: 

G> When trying to open newsgroups with a hug number of articles,
G> e.g. gmane.comp.php.general on the gmane newsserver, I find that gnus is
G> unable to do so and says "Memory exhausted--use C-x s then exit and
G> restart Emacs" while doing the nntp read.

G> Setting gnus-newsgroup-maximum-articles doesn't seem to make any
G> difference, the nntp read still seems to try and get absolutely
G> everything.

G> Does anyone have any ideas how to get around this?

Normally this is not an issue because NNTP servers don't keep enough
articles.  GMane is starting to have enough history to make it a
problem, I guess.  Gnus can't be easily fixed to work around this.

AFAIK you have two options:

a) catch up completely with `c' then read normally

b) read N at a time (where N is up to you) with `C-u N RET' on the
group.  But this will only show you the latest N so you can't
effectively read everything this way (eventually you'll run out of
memory again).

I would compromise like this:

1) catch up with `c'
2) choose how far back you want to go, let's say 2000
3) enter the group with `C-u 2000 RET'.  All the articles are marked as read.
4) unmark them (so they are unread) with `C-u 2000 M-u'
5) exit the group

You now have the latest 2000 articles available and can enter the group
normally without running out of memory.

Ted