"Roland Winkler" <wink...@gnu.org> writes: > On Fri, Sep 10 2021, Bob Newell wrote: >> I have rsync'd gnus for years with success. In addition to the files >> already listed I sync .newsrc.eld, but that is updated infrequently. >> Not strictly gnus entries, but related closely enough, I also sync >> .authinfo and .msmtprc (as I use msmtp) and also .bbdb. > > Thanks to everyone who replied to this thread. > > When you are rsyncing gnus, are you doing this while emacs is running on > the different machines? Or are you starting a fresh emacs session after > all the files got updated on a machine? > > Digging through things I realized that .newsrc.eld seems to store > article marks. For example it sets gnus-newsrc-alist that holds an > assoc list of read articles. However, in a running emacs session the > same information is stored also in gnus-newsrc-hashtb. So the question > becomes: What steps are needed to fully restart gnus while emacs is > running so that internal variables such as gnus-newsrc-hashtb get > re-initialized, too. > > -- I realized that testing all this does not require two different > machines. But two instances of emacs running on one computer > effectively give the same situation to play with. It seems that a > running gnus session does not warn the user that another emacs instance > has fiddled with files such as .newsrc.eld. Is this true?
Yes, the .newsrc.eld file only gets written when you save Gnus ("s" in the *Group* buffer), and I would absolutely not try to update files for a Gnus that's still running, it will not handle that gracefully. It should, however, be enough to shut Gnus down first (you can see the `gnus-clear-system' function to see what happens then), rsync, then restart Gnus.