On Monday 01 April 2019 10:57:58 Gene Heskett wrote:

> On Sunday 31 March 2019 21:23:58 Mike Bird wrote:
> > On Sun March 31 2019 18:08:16 Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > Ok, I've used kmail to make new folders named 2001, yadda yadda.
> > > Then used kmail to move, sorted by date, each year into its
> > > subdir.
> > >
> > > And I've adjusted that particular filter to put new messages in
> > > emc/2019, which I'll obviously have to fix next new years.
> > >
> > > Thats working well and kmail has regained much of its former
> > > snappiness.
> > >
> > > Just one problem remains. How do I get rid of the old years in the
> > > lefthand folder display, its now about 20 names taller than the
> > > screen.
> >
> > Hi Gene,
> >
> > It's probably more convenient to have new messages come into the
> > top-level emc folder rather than emc/2019.  That way you don't have
> > to change the filter each year.  And you can click on the [-] to
> > hide the subfolders.
> >
> > --Mike
>
> This works too, except that new messages written to this top level
> directory are always unread.  Even though there are only 6 or 7
> messages in cur, that directory is 2641920 bytes long. ISTR that ext4
> has a truncate in place utility, but cannot now recall its name.
>
> Is this a useable clue? What I've just now done using mc, is to move
> those messages to tmp, delete cur, then make a new cur, and move the
> messages back to cur.  And I will now restart kmail.

And that seems to have fixed it!, those messages are no longer forever 
new.  So maybe it was an overly long directory all along. Too meny 
extension segments. I've no clue where ext4's limit is but if it was 
nitros9, formerly os9, the limit it 48 extension segments, but one can 
vary the segment size. New install in the 80s was on floppy's so an 
extension was 8 256 byte sectors, but I've had mine at $20 for a couple 
decades as thats a good size with a gigabyte HD or 2. Doesn't mean 
squawt here though.

So now the maintainers at least have a clue where to look.

But it does bring up another question, Mike: another folder, containing 
nearly a 20 year archive of messages from the trs-80 color computer 
list, went thru this for about a month several years ago, and eventually 
got well on its own, and there are currently something just north of 
108,000 messages in it. That coco/cur directory is now 6066176 bytes 
long, and is not now suffering from this problem.  Why not?

Good question, that.

Also, and this has never neen done, but there is an option under "folder" 
to archive it, but no mention of that in the handbook. Twould be 
educaional if that was updated to explain what happens when that option 
is invoked.  There is, someplace, an option to compact a folder, or was, 
I cannot now find it. Ah, found it for the coco folder, right click on 
coco, select compact, but it actually grew the directory about 10 
kilobytes when I did that. Odd.

Your turn Mike :) My problem seems to be solved, at least temporarily 
till the next folder hits the magic number someplace. But I have 
expiries set up on the busier lists, so this could be the last such 
instance on my watch, even with a pacemaker I won't live forever.

Thanks.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>