10.9.7 Gnus in a dial-up environment

Question 7.1:		I don't have a permanent connection to the net, how can I minimize the time I've got to be connected?
Question 7.2:		So what was this thing about the Agent?
Question 7.3:		I want to store article bodies on disk, too. How to do it?
Question 7.4:		How to tell Gnus not to try to send mails / postings while I'm offline?

Question 7.1:

I don't have a permanent connection to the net, how can I minimize the time I've got to be connected?

Answer:

You've got basically two options: Either you use the Gnus Agent (see below) for this, or you can install programs which fetch your news and mail to your local disk and Gnus reads the stuff from your local machine.

If you want to follow the second approach, you need a program which fetches news and offers them to Gnus, a program which does the same for mail and a program which receives the mail you write from Gnus and sends them when you're online.

Let's talk about Unix systems first: For the news part, the easiest solution is a small nntp server like Leafnode or sn, of course you can also install a full featured news server like inn.

Then you want to fetch your Mail, popular choices are

• fetchmail and
• getmail.

On windows boxes I'd vote for Hamster, it's a small freeware, open-source program which fetches your mail and news from remote servers and offers them to Gnus (or any other mail and/or news reader) via nntp respectively POP3 or IMAP. It also includes a smtp server for receiving mails from Gnus.

Question 7.2:

So what was this thing about the Agent?

Answer:

The Gnus agent is part of Gnus, it allows you to fetch mail and news and store them on disk for reading them later when you're offline. It kind of mimics offline newsreaders like e.g. Forte Agent. If you want to use the Agent place the following in ~/.gnus if you are still using 5.8.8 or 5.9 (it's the default since 5.10.0):

(setq gnus-agent t)

Now you've got to select the servers whose groups can be stored locally. To do this, open the server buffer (that is press `^' while in the group buffer). Now select a server by moving point to the line naming that server. Finally, agentize the server by typing `J a'. If you make a mistake, or change your mind, you can undo this action by typing `J r'. When you're done, type 'q' to return to the group buffer. Now the next time you enter a group on a agentized server, the headers will be stored on disk and read from there the next time you enter the group.

Question 7.3:

I want to store article bodies on disk, too. How to do it?

Answer:

You can tell the agent to automatically fetch the bodies of articles which fulfill certain predicates, this is done in a special buffer which can be reached by saying `J c' in group buffer. Please refer to the documentation for information which predicates are possible and how exactly to do it.

Further on you can tell the agent manually which articles to store on disk. There are two ways to do this: Number one: In the summary buffer, process mark a set of articles that shall be stored in the agent by saying `#' with point over the article and then type `J s'. The other possibility is to set, again in the summary buffer, downloadable (%) marks for the articles you want by typing `@' with point over the article and then typing `J u'. What's the difference? Well, process marks are erased as soon as you exit the summary buffer while downloadable marks are permanent. You can actually set downloadable marks in several groups then use fetch session ('J s' in the GROUP buffer) to fetch all of those articles. The only downside is that fetch session also fetches all of the headers for every selected group on an agentized server. Depending on the volume of headers, the initial fetch session could take hours.

Question 7.4:

How to tell Gnus not to try to send mails / postings while I'm offline?

Answer:

All you've got to do is to tell Gnus when you are online (plugged) and when you are offline (unplugged), the rest works automatically. You can toggle plugged/unplugged state by saying `J j' in group buffer. To start Gnus unplugged say `M-x gnus-unplugged' instead of `M-x gnus'. Note that for this to work, the agent must be active.