MIME parts not saved

[John Williams <john.williams@otago.ac.nz>]

When I try to view an attachement in an email message (a MS Word
document or PDF, for example), Gnus helpfully tells me that xdg-open is
opening /tmp/mm* . But nothing ever happens.  In a sepratate terminal
window I say ls /tmp/mm*, but there are no files of that pattern.

So then I try to save the part locally, am prompted for a location and
save the file.  Great!  The file is created. Except that when I go to
open it, I find that it is empty, i.e. 0 bytes.

I have no clue how to start debugging this. What infomation shouldl I
provide to anyone who would like to help me?  My whole .emacs and/or
.gnus.el?

Ma Gnus v0.17, Emacs 24.3.50.1 on Fedora 19.  Is any other information
relevant?

Thanks,

John