On Fri, Sep 10 2021, Eric Abrahamsen wrote:
> 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.Thanks, it took me a while to get back to this. It seems that `gnus-clear-system' / quitting gnus is missing `gnus-save-newsrc-file-last-timestamp'. Quitting gnus, then rsync'ing gnus followed by a restart of gnus will use .newsrc.eld file from the other machine. But when this .newsrc.eld file is saved again, the timestamp of the file on disk is compared against the old timestamp of the old file that's already gone. I submitted a bug report (bug#51052).
