backing up *FULL* gnus state

[Maurizio Vitale]

occasionally, sometimes, somewhere, I need to do a full linux reinstall
wiping my home directory clean. Although I save my .newsrc* files, I
always find that some part of my state is not preserved across the
reinstall. Things that at different times haven't been preserved are:
  - nnml groups (these often come up after a bit of playing around, but
    I'm not sure what I do to make it happen. They seem unsubscribed)
  - rss feeds
  - scoring/banning of authors
  - hierarchical group organization
  - mail fetching (so I have .authinfo added to my list of things to
    remember now)
so my question is: what is the full list of files I need to backup in
order to be able to wipe my home clean, reinstall those files and have
gnus behaving *exactly* as before the big purge?

Thanks,

        Maurizio

...and yes, I know that a separate partition for my home directory would
solve this problem, but I'm afraid it would introduce others:
distributions save craploads of stuff in home directories and I do not
particularly trust the fact that they're compatible across major
release, or different dstributions.
I do have separate partitions for a few subdirectories of my home, though.