gnus doesn't periodically check emails

Question

I have the following in my ~/.gnus:

(gnus-demon-add-handler, 'gnus-demon-scan-mail 5 t)
(gnus-demon-init)

I expect that gnus will be checking for new emails every 5 min, however this doesn't happen. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Are you using nnmaildir or nnml? It seems to me that the daemon does not work for nnmaildir. Can someone confirm please.

Here is the code for gnus-demon-scan-mail

(defun gnus-demon-scan-mail ()
  (save-window-excursion
(let ((servers gnus-opened-servers)
  server
  (nnmail-fetched-sources (list t)))
  (while (setq server (car (pop servers)))
(and (gnus-check-backend-function 'request-scan (car server))
     (or (gnus-server-opened server)
     (gnus-open-server server))
     (gnus-request-scan nil server))))))

Edit I have found these two functions on the gnus mailing list. They are really helpful to understand how things work.

;;; * check new mail
;;; ** function def
(defun gnus-demon-scan-mail-or-news-and-update (level)
"Scan for new mail, updating the *Group* buffer."
  (let ((win (current-window-configuration)))
    (unwind-protect
        (save-window-excursion
          (save-excursion
            (when (gnus-alive-p)
              (save-excursion
                (set-buffer gnus-group-buffer)
                (gnus-group-get-new-news level)))))
      (message "scanning for new mail done")
      (set-window-configuration win))))

(defun gnus-demon-scan-news-and-update ()
"Scan for new mail, updating the *Group* buffer."
  (gnus-demon-scan-mail-or-news-and-update 3))

;;; ** command
(gnus-demon-add-handler 'gnus-demon-scan-news-and-update 10 nil)
(gnus-demon-add-handler 'gnus-demon-scan-mail 10 nil)
(gnus-demon-init)

And I'm using nnml as my mail back-end with procmail and fetchmail

(setq gnus-select-method '(nnml ""))
(setq mail-sources  '((file :path "~/.mail/inbox.spool")
          ))

For mail notification you can use this https://stackoverflow.com/a/9611516/2081427 The you get notified in the mode-line each time a mail new mail comes.

Note I couldn't make gnus-notify.el work for more than one group. So as far as I know if you use nnmail-split-methods and want gnus-notify.el for more than one group it won't work.