[Pan-users] Re: how do I prune messages off my system?

[Duncan]

John M. Gabriele posted
<address@hidden>, excerpted below, 
on Tue, 19 Apr 2005 10:26:35 -0700:

> I'd like to keep minimal newsgroup messages on my hard disk. What I want
> to do is:
> 
> 1. Remove/delete/purge all messages older than $n days, and

Create a new filter, call it >30 days, or whatever.  Choose the Article is
at least N days old, changing N to what you want, then push the Add New
Line to the Filter button.

Here, I have a similar filter, only I only want to remove /read/ articles
>30 days old, so I also selected the Article Is option, selected "read"
from the drop-down, and added that, ensuring the thing said ALL OF: at the
top (if not, use the button to switch to any of).  This way, I can keep
any messages I want to save for whatever reason, around for awhile, by
keeping them marked unread.  They'll still disappear when the server
expires them, of course, unless I move them to a folder, but that's not a
problem for the groups and servers I use the filter on.  (Mainly, I use it
on the gmane.org list2news gateway which I use to follow this and other
lists.  As a list archive, it never expires messages.)

Once you have your filter, OK out and go to rules, and create a new rule.
Call it >30 day expire, or whatever.   Under filters, select the filter
you just created.  Under newsgroups, set it to the newsgroups you want it
to apply to.  Under actions, check Delete Article.  Ensure Apply to
Incoming is set (yes, this will mean that it kills articles older than the
filter setting days when they come in).

Note that PAN will /not/ automatically purge messages based on this rule
if they are already exist in its records, however, even as it applies it
to new ones it downloads.  You can manually apply the rule from the rules
dialog, whenever you like, however.

> 2. When downloading messages (either when first subscribing, or else
> getting back to a busy newsgroup I haven't read in a while) only download
> the $m newest headers, marking the rest as "read" and not downloading
> those.

There's a couple ways to do this.  First, you can use the filter/rule
method above to do it based on N days rather than N messages.  Second, you
can use the download N messages option, which is under "more download
options", both the context menu when right-clicking a group, and from the
newsgroups menu.  I'm not sure, as I seldom if ever use that option, but I
/think/ that option gets the newest N messages.  When you were done, you'd
then use the mark group read option to mark all as yet unread and
undownloaded messages as read.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html