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Somehow or other, GNUS has to know how to find the current netnews. Usually this means it has to know the hostname of the NNTP server.
There are several ways that GNUS can get this information. Most often,
it comes from the environment variable NNTPSERVER. You can
specify a default when you install Emacs by setting the variable
gnus-nntp-server in the `site-init.el' file. If
neither this default nor the environment variable is defined, then GNUS
reads the server name using the minibuffer when you start it.
You can override the default by specifying a prefix argument for the
gnus command. Then it always reads the hostname to use.
GNUS can also bypass NNTP and read the news directly from the file system. This reduces the overhead, but the features for retrieving by their message IDs may fail to work (see section Local News Spool Specific Variables). To do this, specify `::' as the NNTP server "machine name".
You can also specify a subdirectory of your home directory to use as the current news spool. To do this, specify a colon and the subdirectory name as the NNTP server "machine name". For example, `:Mail' says to use the directory `~/Mail' as the news spool. This makes it possible to read mail stored in MH folders or articles saved by GNUS. The files in the directory with numeric names are considered news articles, and the other files in the directory are ignored.
A server specific startup file for each directory must exist before you start GNUS. For example, a startup file for the directory `~/Mail' should be a file named `.newsrc-:Mail'. See section The Startup File, for more information on the server specific startup file.
Each news server has its own active file which lists the numbers of the active articles in each newsgroup. Reading this file from the server is among the first things GNUS does when it starts. Commands such as g that report additional newly-arrived articles work by rereading the active file.
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