nnmail weirdness

nnmail weirdness

[Loren Schall]

Hi,

I'm hoping somebody can help me.  I'm seeing a peculiar error.  At this
point I don't think it's directly a Gnus problem, but that's where I'm
seeing it.  (I begin to suspect efs, but I'm just wildly guessing.)

When I do a "g" in the group buffer (ie `gnus-group-get-new-news'), I
sometimes get the error message:

  Wrong type argument: number-or-marker-p, dired-handler-fn

I've traced this to the following line in `nnmail-activate'.

	    (and (setq file (ignore-errors
			      (symbol-value (intern (format "%s-active-file"
							    backend)))))
		 (setq file-time (nth 5 (file-attributes file)))
		 (or (not
		      (setq timestamp
			    (condition-case ()
				(symbol-value (intern
					       (format "%s-active-timestamp"
						       backend)))
			      (error 'none))))
                     (not (consp timestamp))
                     (equal timestamp '(0 0))
=>                   (> (nth 0 file-time) (nth 0 timestamp))
		     (and (= (nth 0 file-time) (nth 0 timestamp))
			  (> (nth 1 file-time) (nth 1 timestamp))))))
	(save-excursion
	  (or (eq timestamp 'none)
	      (set (intern (format "%s-active-timestamp" backend))
		   file-time))
	  (funcall (intern (format "%s-request-list" backend)))))

`timestamp' has the bogus value (in this instance) of
`(dired-hander-fn)'.  When I step through `nnmail-activate' with Edebug,
I see `timestamp' being set from `nnml-active-timestamp'.  (I've also
seen `nnml-active-timestamp' with a string value, a random filename.)

How can I find out who's setting `nnml-active-timestamp'?  As far as I
can tell `nnmail-active' is the only place that `nnml-active-timestamp'
is set.  It doesn't seem to happen when I've instrumented
`nnmail-activate'.  Can I convince Edebug not to stop every time
`nnmail-activate' is invoked, only when `nnml-active-timestamp' gets a
non-numeric value?  How do I set a watchpoint?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

On a completely unrelated note, my initial "~/.gnus" predates custom.
As I find things I want to change from the default, I've slowly been
adding to my Gnus init file.  It would seem that the *right* way to do
this is to use custom for these customizations and only put things in
"~/.gnus" if custom doesn't currently support what I want to change.  Is
there an easy way to "move" all my `setq's to custom?  I would have
though that just invoking custom would define the "current values" of
all customizations to my current values, but that didn't seem to work
the last time I checked.  Am I doing something wrong or just thinking
funny.

Thanks, Lars, for all your work making Gnus the ultimate news reader!

-- 
Loren Schall
schall@ateng.az.honeywell.com

Re: nnmail weirdness

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Loren Schall <schall@saifr00.ateng.az.honeywell.com> writes:

> I'm hoping somebody can help me.  I'm seeing a peculiar error.  At this
> point I don't think it's directly a Gnus problem, but that's where I'm
> seeing it.  (I begin to suspect efs, but I'm just wildly guessing.)

Have you tried running Emacs without efs and seeing whether that
helps? 

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@ifi.uio.no * Lars Ingebrigtsen