40.2 When Gnus Starts Up
At startup, Gnus reads your .newsrc news initialization file
and attempts to communicate with the local news server, which is a
repository of news articles. The news server need not be the same
computer you are logged in on.
If you start Gnus and connect to the server, but do not see any
newsgroups listed in the group buffer, type L or A k to get
a listing of all the groups. Then type u to toggle
subscription to groups.
The first time you start Gnus, Gnus subscribes you to a few selected
groups. All other groups start out as killed groups for you; you
can list them with A k. All new groups that subsequently come to
exist at the news server become zombie groups for you; type A
z to list them. You can subscribe to a group shown in these lists
using the u command.
When you quit Gnus with q, it automatically records in your
.newsrc and .newsrc.eld initialization files the
subscribed or unsubscribed status of all groups. You should normally
not edit these files manually, but you may if you know how.