Emacs gnus in 8.1 not reading email

[Carl Johnson]

Carl Johnson <carlj at peak.org> writes:

> I am experimenting with 8.1 in VirtualBox, but I discovered that I
> can't get gnus to work.  I just brought over my configuration from a
> working 7.3 system, but on 8.1 it won't read the mail from the
> system.  Gnus will start up, but it just reports that there is no
> mail.  It did work one time with a couple of test messages, but I have
> never gotten it to repeat since then.
>
> I tried sending a couple of messages and they show up in my system
> mailbox.  I also tried reading my system mail with the command line
> mail program and emacs rmail to verify that the system is handling
> mail properly.  I also tried using a blank .gnus file and there was no
> change.  I verified with my 7.3 system that gnus will at least read
> mail with a blank .gnus file.
>
> Does anybody have any suggestions on what is different?  I have been
> using gnus for many years and I don't really want to change to another
> mail program.  Thanks for any ideas.

I finally stumbled upon the problem, and it was not with FreeBSD (or
emacs).  I discovered that gnus won't check any mail when gnus-agent
is in the unplugged state, even though I just use a local mailbox.  I
must have clicked on the menu item without noticing or know what it
was.  In my defense, the previous version of emacs that I had been
using didn't have or didn't use agent mode, so I had never encountered
it.

Sorry of misleading anybody and thanks for the responses.

-- 
Carl Johnson		carlj at peak.org