New Groups Starting Up Startup Files

1.7: Changing Servers

Sometimes it is necessary to move from one NNTP server to another. This happens very rarely, but perhaps you change jobs, or one server is very flaky and you want to use another.

Changing the server is pretty easy, right? You just change gnus-select-method to point to the new server?

Wrong!

Article numbers are not (in any way) kept synchronized between different NNTP servers, and the only way Gnus keeps track of what articles you have read is by keeping track of article numbers. So when you change gnus-select-method, your `.newsrc' file becomes worthless.

Gnus provides a few functions to attempt to translate a `.newsrc' file from one server to another. They all have one thing in common---they take a looong time to run. You don't want to use these functions more than absolutely necessary.

If you have access to both servers, Gnus can request the headers for all the articles you have read and compare Message-IDs and map the article numbers of the read articles and article marks. The M-x gnus-change-server command will do this for all your native groups. It will prompt for the method you want to move to.

You can also move individual groups with the M-x gnus-group-move-group-to-server command. This is useful if you want to move a (foreign) group from one server to another.

If you don't have access to both the old and new server, all your marks and read ranges have become worthless. You can use the M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups command to clear out all data that you have on your native groups. Use with caution.

New Groups

Starting Up

Startup Files